Tag Archives: Meaning of things

True happiness, love and perfection

 *

True happiness comes from the joy of deeds well done, the zest of creating things new.
+
It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.
+
For true love is inexhaustible; the more you give, the more you have. And if you go to draw at the true fountainhead, the more water you draw, the more abundant is its flow.
+

Each man must look to himself to teach him the meaning of life. It is not something discovered: it is something molded.

+
A civilization is a heritage of beliefs, customs, and knowledge slowly accumulated in the course of centuries, elements difficult at times to justify by logic, but justifying themselves as paths when they lead somewhere, since they open up for man his inner distance.
+

The meaning of things lies not in the things themselves, but in our attitude towards them.

+
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

Perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add but when there is no longer anything to take away, when a body has been stripped down to its nakedness.

– Antoine de Saint Exupéry

 

 

English: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, pilot and w...

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, pilot and writer (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Antoine de Saint Exupéry the French aviator and writer whose child’s fable for adults The Little Prince (1943) is not only in the school curriculum to be read, but is the person who lets children and adults dream and believe in their own dreams (born June 29, 1900, Lyon, France—died July 31, 1944, in flight over the Mediterranean) French and writer. His writings exalt perilous adventure and aviation, as in the novels Southern Mail (1929) and Night Flight (1931) and in the lyrical memoir with philosophical musings and meditations “Wind, Sand, and Stars” (1939).

He flew as a commercial, test, and military reconnaissance pilot and was a publicity attaché for Air France and a reporter.
He died when he was shot down on a wartime Air Force mission over the Mediterranean.

Dutch version / Nederlandse versie > Echt geluk, liefde en perfectie

+

Find also: What moves mountains? Trust!

+++

  • The Timeless Tao (zengardner.com)
    it seems we have based so much of our understanding and our culture on empirical, materialistic science, that we have left out the rest of what’s “out there”. We have opted for the linear and causal mode of thinking, rather than what’s circular, unseen, interpenetrating, and spirals. What we’re discussing here is about as far away from petri dish as you can get. The Taoists always matter-of-factly asserted that Taoism exists in all places- all planets, all galaxies, all times, in all extraterrestrial civilisations- not as a religion, but as a flexible kind of science, a non-material science, that can be translated into any language. It just so happens that on our planet, at our particular stage of evolution, Taoism is represented in texts such as the I-Ching in 64 hexagrams. In other words, Taoism adapts to us and not the other way around- and that is the biggest difference between this and other modern religions, especially the Abrahamic ones in which an image of God is made in the image of man. There are no Gods or Deities per se in Taoism, at least not in early Taoism. They came later as psychological byproducts of a growing age of esoterica and cross-acculturation.
  • The Sutra of the Master of Healing (Bhaisajayaguru-Vaidurya-Prabhasa Tathagata) (zenspeaking.com)
    I now ask all beings to light up the lamps and hang up the banners, to set free the animals, and to do good deeds, so that misery and grief can be overcome and the life’ hardships can be avoided.”
  • ‘Towards Global Inclusion of LGBT People Within Catholic Communities’ (jasongoroncy.com)
    Well, each one of us was as shocked as the person next to them: the first-class citizens finding themselves on the same level as us, with all their purity and sense of separateness deflated, and having to overcome a certain repugnance about dealing with people like us; and the second class citizens having to get used to taking ourselves seriously and behave as sons and daughters, rather than dirty servant children who had a sort of built in excuse for impurity.
    +
    the teaching concerning us being bearers of an objective disorder inclining us to intrinsically evil acts has revealed itself to be a taboo
  • What Is Evil (tvtropes.org)
    Philosophers of morality have, for centuries, struggled with the apparently impossible challenge of objectively proving a “should”, even as most of us deeply believe that, say, murdering innocent children is objectively wrong. Typically, heroes tend to cling to that exact deep conviction; they don’t care for arguing about moral relativism, much like real-life people who see themselves as morally in the right don’t care for it. You could say that this has resulted from aeons of evolutionary pressure on heroes: the ones who stopped to think out the moral conundrums got killed by the Card-Carrying Villain who realized they could use this to Logic Bomb heroes. Meanwhile, the heroes who refused to give in to the villain’s nihilism – either out of boneheadedness, or out of a belief that fighting for what you believe in is a worthy enough goal- persevered. Out-of-universe, the typical lack of moral ambiguity in hero/villain conflict may be attributable to writers just not wanting to waste any effort on that issue, for either ideological or pragmatic reasons.
  • Be Mad At God First (orthodoxyandrecovery.blogspot.com)
    The path of Recovery requires that we drop the pretense: anger is a poison, and it is never justified.  Resentments and condemnation of others is the same judgment and condemnation you will receive.
    +
    Our afflictions are the path to healing.  Do not resent others for doing what is in their nature to do.  God will deal with them.  You yourself must be healed, and God will only do that if you cooperation.
  • 7 – Essays – Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) (classiclit.about.com)
    nature punishes any neglect of prudence. If you think the senses final, obey their law. If you believe in the soul, do not clutch at sensual sweetness before it is ripe on the slow tree of cause and effect. It is vinegar to the eyes, to deal with men of loose and imperfect perception.
    +
    Genius should be the child of genius, and every child should be inspired; but now it is not to be predicted of any child, and nowhere is it pure. We call partial half-lights, by courtesy, genius; talent which converts itself to money; talent which glitters to-day, that it may dine and sleep well to-morrow; and society is officered by men of parts, as they are properly called, and not by divine men. These use their gifts to refine luxury, not to abolish it. Genius is always ascetic; and piety and love. Appetite shows to the finer souls as a disease, and they find beauty in rites and bounds that resist it.
  • 49 For 49 (tokenhippygirl.com)
    The wind blows here, it’s blowing somewhere across the world.  It carries life and hazard and is alive in its own way.  It reminds me how gentle or ferocious life can be and that I should try to be gentler, quieter, softer in my approach.  It reminds me how small I am, how big the world is, and that there are people in other places lifting their faces to the wind, closing their eyes, and sighing, just like I do sometimes.

6 Comments

Filed under Being and Feeling, Lifestyle, Quotations or Citations