The following is a series of personal quotes/ideas that I've accumulated over the course of the past year that illustrate my belief that the best course for any person to take in life is one of balance, humility, and consistent self-examination (not unlike what Socrates believed)
1) The experience of staring into the plaintive, anguished eyes of a living creature is an experience unlike any other. The intensity is so great: to confront misfortune, weakness, and/or adversity in the eyes of someone else is to look straight into the eyes of ourselves against the backdrop of eternity.
2) Enveloped in the cloak of cosmic humility, we are blessed or cursed with the "immediate certainty of vision" that all events, circumstances, and all physical, spiritual, and psychological sensations are the result of powers beyond the individual.
3) Luck is a roguish entity; one that perennially brainwashes people...turning coats and trading sides...elevating, disintegrating, elucidating, and befuddling the minds of human beings...leaving them at the mercy of circumstance.
4) It is an undoubtedly foolish illusion to assume universal control in a universe of infinitely ever-changing possibilities.
5) We are at the mercy of the soil...the roll of the die...the invisible trap door beneath our feet, which moves in tandem with us as we do.
6) Humility is the safety harness of the soul.
7) All people believe in divinities, even atheists. Divinities are the supreme forces of the universe, ones that govern and guide the movements of all matter in the world and the circumstances & experiences of all living beings.
8) Eternity is gently nestled inside of every flickering moment of time. The entirety of the universe is gently nestled inside every infinitely minute piece of matter. Heaven and Hell, respectively, aren't merely realms filled with white clouds and golden harps or roaring flames and smoldering rocks, but physical, spiritual, and psychological manifestations of the human experience that exist within and beyond the flesh.
9) Hell is the state of absolute, unending, inescapable anguish. Heaven is the state of infinite clarity, renewal, hope, and love.
10) Reality is a cavernous, pockmarked landscape...continually manifesting itself through horrifyingly glorious moments of secrecy and revelation.
11) The human experience is a consistent balancing act between deterioration and convalescence.
12) Patience is a virtue only when it is directed towards an inevitable resolution. Otherwise, it is a mere waste of mortal finitude.
13) The expression freedom isn't free has always confused me. Ultimate freedom is, has been, and always will be free. If that were not the case, it would not be true freedom.
14) Value doesn't exist within suffering. Value necessarily negates suffering.
15) Remember that though the flames roar eternally, Hell is dead-bolted from the inside.
16) With each successive moment comes the birth of a new, infinite body of potential for change.
17) Religion is a human enterprise. Spirituality is religion in its purest state.
18) We need not focus our energy on religious conversion. Rather, focusing our energy on religious consolidation is more important. The diverse opinions and beliefs of all human beings are more alike than they different.
19) God and Divinity are the best of nations, governments, states, and private homes...the parents of Utopia...their constituents nestled comfortably in the various neighborhoods of the Cosmos, unified in spirit by their allegiance to a state of perpetual growth and wonder.
20) The brilliancy of technology lies in the teleology of human application.
21) Beneath the thin veneer of consciousness, the human being is a voracious animal...continually pitting its razor sharp fangs against the flesh, blood, sweat, and tears of the external world.
22) Where do you choose to live: beneath the ground or above it? Are you the island or the volcano beneath it that brings forth its existence?
23) The world exists as things...as rocks and trees and flesh and blood and stone...as something that's the result of billions of years of simple logic fleshed out and manifested in the form of infinitely imperceptible matter.
24) I often get the impression that when one posits strange, personal, and oftentimes unorthodox views on life, society, culture, and the overall interwoven fabric of human existence, experience, and interaction, they are frowned upon and ostracized...not by the violent threats and coercive actions of some oppressive government, but rather by the harsh opinions of a judgmental society.
25) We too often jump to conclusions and fail to understand the true context and circumstance under which somebody speaks of or writes about something. We remain cautious and reserved, not expressing thoughts we need to express because we fear others will passive-aggressively, haphazardly judge us. As a result, the flowing network of human communication remains empty. News is mere gossip, and excruciatingly superficial, innocuous prattle becomes part of "iconic" human culture.
26) We are taught to be audacious individuals who pursue the greatest endeavors and entrepreneurial enterprises of the world, and to soar fearlessly through the open skies. Why then do our wings remain coated in an irremovable layer of Icarus's wax?
27) Our desires are ultimately not driven by actions, but rather by the hope that one day our actions will no longer be required.
28) It is important to consider all views when examining the cosmic predicament and phenomenology that envelops us. We must avoid sleepwalking--blindfolded--through the thick woodlands of our mind.
29) Strength, fortune, courage, and sacrifice...those are the assignments of human existence. When we realize that we must walk across crumbling stone bridges over infinite chasms, using the sheer skill of balance to outweigh the adverse circumstances that rage forth against us, we must depend on both one another and ourselves as individuals. Humility and self-confidence are not irreconcilable.
30) Every conscious form of life has an inner essence...an inner soul. These souls are sent down into the darkness of the earth to pave the way for the light of the divine.
31) Must we live like Yahoos among Houyhnhnms, silently yet ferociously snarling at one another under the pretense of sheer obliviousness? Our better natures are frequently trampled to death by the appetites like the hooves of our said superiors.
32) We are the Laputans. Our civilizations hover above the earth, yet we must always tread everywhere with a flapper in hand.
33) We all wish to drink from the River Lethe and taste the Lotus flowers.
34) One day the light from the two silver candlesticks will fall upon our faces.
35) All events and experiences exist within the confines of rhythm and melody.
36) Everything is an unfinished story.
37) Sometimes there are moments in life...thunderous, harrowing moments when our basic peace of mind is shaken to the core and that which we fear, love, and hate the most is exposed under the bright light of reality.
38) The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved by ourselves--say rather, loved in spite of ourselves-- Victor Hugo (Les Miserables)
39) It is one of the greatest enigmas of the world that people view and define the qualities, values, and experiences of things by their opposites. Day isn't day without night. Sunshine isn't the same without rain. And suffering makes joy what it is. Funny, supposing that joy existed without pain, day without night, or sunshine without rain; would anybody really be that miserable...or bored for that matter? It's impossible to say because we've never actually lived with that as our reality.
40) Why have people come to the conclusion that they are nothing until they're something? Is it too much to simply be someone, instead of having to become someone?
41) Every person is destined to suffer the encumbrances and relish in the joys relative to the era in which they live. If one were to escape the contingent physical, spiritual, cultural, social, political, and psychological advancements or regressions of their age, they would, in a sense, dodge the rules of existence. Time travel is thus not possible, as it would destroy the source that keeps all living beings in a consistent, unpredictable state of flux.
42) Why is bravery elevated above all other virtues? Do we despise fear with so much passion and reject it so greatly that we venerate the very quality that completely ignores it?
43) The whole scope of human history is comprised of those who triumphed and those who failed. True history is not simply written by the winners.
44) There is no such thing as a "Battle of the Sexes." A "Battle of the Genders"? Yes.
45) Power for the sheer sake of pleasure is the root of all evil.
46) The greatest tragedy in life is realizing that we took someone or something blessed for granted.
47) The past is an infinite reservoir, eternally blind to all senses except that of the mind.
48) What is the present? The offspring of the past and the parent of the future.
49) Sometimes that which could've been but wasn't is just as significant (if not more so) than that which actually was.
50) Reality is incidental.
51) Reality manifests itself through illusion, and illusion manifests itself through reality.
52) Sometimes those who believe they're trapped inside steel cells fifty miles beneath the earth's crust are actually running freely through verdurous meadows. Sometimes those who believe they're running freely through verdurous meadows are actually trapped inside steel cells fifty miles beneath the earth's crust.
53) Acting is a marvelous endeavor...to embody the life of another person and yet still retain your own.
54) Life is a series of inverse moments.
55) Life is movement...dynamism..contour. Boredom-- the stagnancy of experience--is the murderer of the human soul.
56) Intoxication is the forbidden acquisition of knowledge that good and bad are ultimately the same thing and part of the one inseparable, immutable, cosmological entity. Sobriety is compromised truth.
57) What happens when these words on the page are nothing more than bright, frighteningly empirical clusters of visual stimuli (I suppose in that case it obviously wouldn't matter, as :23o87289hfjke*&&^^%%$)?
58) No time is wasted. Does water that is shaken inside of a closed jar manage to escape?
59) For eons, man has seen only the wheel. Now he sees only the cog.
60) If something without form and figure can be as much of a daily reality to us as health insurance bills and trips to the car dealership, why should we not at least embrace it with a sense of marvel and wonder?
61) The soul quivers but says it does not. What good has ever arisen from dishonesty?
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