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Showing posts with label important. Show all posts
Showing posts with label important. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

Today I finished reading "Siddhartha: An Indian Poem" by Hermann Hesse [translation by Susan Bernofsky, The Modern Library]. I think if you were going to read one "finding yourself" narrative from the first half of the last century, I'd skip this and read The Razor's Edge by W. Somerset Maugham. (great book, great Tyrone Power movie).With that being said, I thought this short novel was engaging and, at times, enlightening. Grade: B #61

“Siddhartha began to understand that it was not happiness and peace that had come to him with his son but, rather, sorrow and worry. But he loved him and preferred the sorrow and worry of love to the happiness and peace he had known without the boy.” - "Siddhartha: An Indian Poem" by Hermann Hesse

"[rejecting the philosophical concept that all is meaningless and illusory] Blue was blue, river was river, and even if the One, the Divine, lay hidden in the blue and the river . . .it was still the nature and the intention of the Divine to be yellow here, blue here, sky over there, forest here, and here Siddhartha. Meaning and being did not lie somewhere behind things; they lay within them, within everything . . . When a person reads something and wishes to grasp its meaning, he does not scorn the characters and letters and call them illusory, random, and worthless husks; he reads them, studies them, and loves them, letter for letter. But I - I who set out to read the book of the world and the book of my own being - I scorned the characters and letters in deference to a meaning I assumed in advance." - "Siddhartha: An Indian Poem" by Hermann Hesse

“To see through the world, to explain it, to scorn it - this may be the business of great thinkers. But what interests me is being able to love the world, not scorn it, not to hate it and hate myself but to look at it and myself and all beings with love and admiration and reverence.” - Siddhartha, Herman Hesse



Sunday, July 15, 2012

A Great Quote

Progress doesn't come from early risers -- progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things. 
~ Robert Anson Heinlein, Notebooks of Lazarus Long )1973)

Friday, June 22, 2012

Quote

"Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize", (1 Corinthians 9:24).

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Jackie O

I greatly enjoyed ABC's 2 hour Jackie Kennedy special, and I wish I could afford the $60 price tag that comes with the book it promoted. I wish they hadn't spent a single second rationalizing her opinions; they were her opinions at that moment in time and big wup if they come off as bitchy 48 yrs later. It's not like MLK is going to hold a press conference and object. 

I will say tho' that her "signature, breathy" voice is irritating in quantity. When you close your eyes, it sounds like a bad drag queen.

Monday, August 8, 2011

A Powerful Reminder

Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not - Samuel Johnson

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

A Farscape Quote

Crichton: Hey, D'Argo, how come I'm not afraid?    

D'Argo: Fear accompanies the possibility of death. Calm shepherds its certainty.

Crichton: I love hanging with you, man.

Thursday, March 10, 2011

Quote

Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact - William James

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Quote

 Do Good And Care Not to Whom - a sign in the hallway of Junie's school, attributed to an old Italian proverb

Saturday, March 5, 2011

Quote

Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end - Semisonic. And some Roman dude named Seneca.

Friday, February 18, 2011

The Best Quote about Writing. Ever.

 I can't understand why a person will take a year to write a novel when he can easily buy one for a few dollars. - the late great Fred Allen

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Quote

 "Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." -Anais Nin

Monday, January 31, 2011

Monday, January 17, 2011

Quote

 Begin to be now what you will be hereafter - William James

Saturday, September 18, 2010

A Rule of Life

A rule of Life, as certain as death and taxes: However much you hope otherwise, damn near everything told to a person - even in the strictest most pinkie swear confidence - will find its way into the ears of their spouse.

Friday, February 26, 2010

Shame on Them

My niece's 2nd grade teacher (she's in 3rd now) was fired today. She'd begun to show signs of mental illness, writing things like "20+20+10" on the board and saying it equaled 30. Other teachers started to shun her. On the way to a staff outing she went back to her rm for her purse & returned to find everyone had left w/out her. I guess there's so little pain in the world they felt they had to add to it. A*holes

Monday, February 15, 2010

Beans and Rice and No Nightlights

Red beans & rice + sausage for dinner, then an hr of the most scuffles ever recorded among the kids. It was like Wrestlemania Slapczynski.

But good can come from bad.

As they were all nuts anyhow, we picked today to break Junie of sleeping w/ the room light on. She slept in the dark from birth to 2, then picked up the habit when she moved 2 her own rm. 2night: darkness. & a lot of crying. It might be a long one