It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched for they are full of the truthless ideal which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real, they are bruised and wounded. It looks as if they were victims of a conspiracy; for the books they read, ideal by the necessity of selection, and the conversation of their elders, who look back upon the past through a rosy haze of forgetfulness, prepare them for an unreal life. They must discover for themselves that all they have read and all they have been told are lies, lies, lies; and each discovery is another nail driven into the body on the cross of life.
I hope I don't write TOO many books! When I look at authors who have written too many books, I wonder to myself "When did they live?" I certainly want to write BECAUSE I live! I know I don't want to write in order to live! My writing is an overflow of the wine glass of my life, not a basin in which I wash out my ideals and expectations.
Happiness consists not of having, but of being; not of possessing, but of enjoying. It is a warm glow of the heart at peace with itself. A martyr at the stake may have happiness that a king on his throne might envy. Man is the creator of his own happiness. It is the aroma of life, lived in harmony with high ideals. For what a man has he may be dependent upon others; what he is rests with him alone.
We must judge the tree by its fruit. The best fruits of the religious experience are the best things history has to offer. The highest flights of charity, devotion, trust, patience, and bravery to which the wings of human nature have spread themselves, have all been flown for religious ideals.
Look, Miranda, he said, those twenty long years that lie between you and me. I've more knowledge of life than you, I've lived more and betrayed more and seen more betrayed. At your age one is bursting with ideals. You think that because I can sometimes see what's trivial and what's important in art that I ought to be more virtuous. But I don't want to be virtuous. My charm (if there is any) for you is simply frankness. And experience. Not goodness. I'm not a good man. Perhaps morally I'm younger even than you are. Can you understand that?
In an era of globalization, we recognize that we are part of a global society, but we have no idea how to make such a society work. So far, no unified vision or leadership has emerged to guide us in this endeavor. We have not yet found a way to expand the spiritual ideals of democracy so that they pertain to every human being, every animal, and every plant. Until we do, human civilization and the Earth's ecosystem will continue to be in peril.
The modern mind is forced towards the future by a certain sense of fatigue, not unmixed with terror, with which it regards the past. It is propelled towards the coming time; it is, in the exact words of the popular phrase, knocked into the middle of next week. And the goad which drives it on thus eagerly is not an affectation for futurity Futurity does not exist, because it is still future. Rather it is a fear of the past; a fear not merely of the evil in the past, but of the good in the past also. The brain breaks down under the unbearable virtue of mankind. There have been so many flaming faiths that we cannot hold; so many harsh heroisms that we cannot imitate; so many great efforts of monumental building or of military glory which seem to us at once sublime and pathetic. The future is a refuge from the fierce competition of our forefathers. The older generation, not the younger, is knocking at our door. It is agreeable to escape, as Henley said, into the Street of By-and-Bye, where stands the Hostelry of Never. It is pleasant to play with children, especially unborn children. The future is a blank wall on which every man can write his own name as large as he likes; the past I find already covered with illegible scribbles, such as Plato, Isaiah, Shakespeare, Michael Angelo, Napoleon. I can make the future as narrow as myself; the past is obliged to be as broad and turbulent as humanity. And the upshot of this modern attitude is really this: that men invent new ideals because they dare not attempt old ideals. They look forward with enthusiasm, because they are afraid to look back.
I do not believe that human lives may be made the means for satisfying an artist's desire for self-expression. We must demand, rather, that every man should be given, if he wishes, the right to model his life himself, as far as this does not interfere too much with others. Much as I may sympathize with the aesthetic impulse, I suggest that the artist might seek expression in another material. Politics, I demand, must uphold equalitarian and individualistic principles; dreams of beauty have to submit to the necessity of helping men in distress, and men who suffer injustice; and to the necessity of constructing institutions to serve such purposes.
Many of us draw lines which we intend never to cross. But life tests our resolve, mercilessly at times, and a foot budges, nudged past that thinly-drawn line. So we draw another, resolving never to cross this one. Days grow dark and fog creeps in to blind our view, clouding the reason for the line’s existence from our minds. We draw another mark, ashamed that the last was crossed with less coaxing than we imagined it would require. Shadows and doubts give further need to draw a new line, and then another and another. Lines, I think, are too slim and obscure to be dependable deterrents for behavior. Too often, too easily, people stumble into places they later regret entering. What, then, keeps some individuals from crossing those narrow lines?It is the power of values. For if a person possessing values were to step one foot outside their line, they would be forced to release hands with those inflexible values and consciously abandon them. But their values are persuasive, keeping a tight grip, warding off the luring temptations beckoning one to test the line. Thus values maintained keep a person safely away from areas they dare not travel, steering a life between the lines, enhancing willpower and shaping mighty strength of character.
That’s why we must continue to support godly men and women who have dedicated their lives to Christian principles and to continuing those ideas in our offspring. Professors’ worldviews influence whatever they teach, from humanities to basic sciences, and what they think about God cannot be hidden from their students.
The religion I am talking about here is plain everyday humanism. That’s exactly what the person named Jesus attempted to spread, but due to innate psychological reasons, his pupils ended up constructing yet another orthodox circle with its own distinct beliefs, ideals and fantasies.
Regimes planted by bayonets do not take root... Our military strength is a prerequisite to peace, but let it be clear we maintain this strength in the hope it will never be used, for the ultimate determinant in the struggle that's now going on in the world will not be bombs and rockets but a test of wills and ideas, a trial of spiritual resolve, the values we hold, the beliefs we cherish, the ideals to which we are dedicated.
Living in this skin is hard and painful, most of the times, because I never volunteered to take this on. The daily sacrifice of heart over mind,the forever ongoing task of explaining this and that,and why I don’t want to look like this and be like thatbut still here I am and if this is the body I’ve been given I’m sure as hell gonna make it work.
Rebuild your world, rebuild your race, rebuild your empire. Rebuild it all. But make sure you rebuild your ideals too. Rebuild the principles that made you a great and honorable galactic power in the first place. Don't prey on the weak. Don't steal from the helpless. Don't murder the innocent. Be a force for good, not a force for yourself.
And when I fall in love,” I began, "I will build a mountain to touch the sky. Then, my lover and I will have the best of both worlds, reality firmly under our feet, while we have our heads in the clouds with all our illusions still intact. And the purple grass will grow all around, high enough to reach our eyes.
How can man put a cost on saving this planet of ours?Have we traversed so far down the road that all we care about is money and wealth?Do we honestly care about the coming generations or are we so greedy that we don't really give a damn about what happens after we leave this life behind?To all of you that read this, stop and look at your son's or daughter's. Walk to your windows and look outside and see other children playing heedless of their parent's greed and selfish ideals.It's the children who we are saving this world for.Not Us!
You know, the whole thing about perfectionism. The perfectionism is very dangerous. Because of course if your fidelity to perfectionism is too high, you never do anything. Because doing anything results in...it's actually kind of tragic because you sacrifice how gorgeous and perfect it is in your head for what it really is. And there were a couple of years where I really struggled with that.
Is it true that man was once perfectly pure and innocent, and that he became degenerate by disobedience? No. The real truth is, and the history of man shows, that he has advanced. Events, like the pendulum of a clock have swung forward and backward, but after all, man, like the hands, has gone steadily on. Man is growing grander. He is not degenerating. Nations and individuals fail and die, and make room for higher forms. The intellectual horizon of the world widens as the centuries pass. Ideals grow grander and purer; the difference between justice and mercy becomes less and less; liberty enlarges, and love intensifies as the years sweep on. The ages of force and fear, of cruelty and wrong, are behind us and the real Eden is beyond. It is said that a desire for knowledge lost us the Eden of the past; but whether that is true or not, it will certainly give us the Eden of the future.
Can we only speak when we are fully living what we are saying? If all our words had to cover all our actions, we would be doomed to permanent silence! Sometimes we are called to proclaim God’s love even when we are not yet fully able to live it. Does that mean we are hypocrites? Only when our own words no longer call us to conversion. Nobody completely lives up to his or her own ideals and visions. But by proclaiming our ideals and visions with great conviction and great humility, we may gradually grow into the truth we speak. As long as we know that our lives always will speak louder than our words, we can trust that our words will remain humble.
To inquire and to learn is the function of the mind, By learning I do not mean the mere cultivation of memory or the accumulation of knowledge, but the capacity to think clearly and sanely without illusion, to start from facts and not from beliefs and ideals. There is no learning if thought originates from conclusions. Merely to acquire information of knowledge is to not to learn. Learning implies the love of understanding and the love of doing a thing for itself. Learning is possible only when there is no coercion through influence, thought attachment or threat, through persuasive encouragement or subtle forms of reward. Most people think that learning is encouraged through comparison, whereas the contrary is the fact. Comparison brings about frustration and merely encourages envy, which is called competition. Like other forms of persuasion, comparison prevents learning and breeds fear.
He watched over word and thought and deed as jealously as if her clear eyes were to pass judgement on it... She held over him the unconscious influence that every girl, whose ideals are high and pure, wields over her friends; an influence that would endure as long as she was faithful to those ideals and which she would certainly lose if she were ever false to them.
Another way to strengthen connection to intuition is to refuse to allow anyone to repress your vivid energies... that means your opinions, your thoughts, your ideas, your values, your morals, your ideals. There is very little right/wrong or good/bad in this world. There is, however, use and not useful.
You mustn't force images on things.Only gods were what you should expect perfection from.You mustn't demand an ideal from anyone.That is weakness. It is an evil that must be hated. It is negligence that must be punished. It spoils not only yourself, but those around you.You are allowed to be disappointed with only yourself. You should hurt only yourself. Hate yourself for not following your ideal.The only one you must not forgive is yourself.
I came to see that man finds meaning in his existence only through the active demonstration of his human self, a cosmos comprising the entire constellation of life's factors: culture, civilization, tradition, history, ideals, facts, physical conditions, one's mental state, the ecology, and so on.
If you have realistic ideals and can generally live up to them, your self-esteem will not be threatened. If your ideals are exaggerated and you cannot reach them, your good feelings from successes may be short lived, and you may feel that you are never good enough.The continued hope for the impossible, the expectation that you will or can be unconditionally loved and adored, is not facing reality but rather holding onto an idealized image of yourself and an idealized version of what others can provide. If this is the case, your sense of self may be threatened by shame and its resulting depression, or by feelings of inadequacy for not living up to your unrealistic ideals. A better understanding of shame may help you recognize your tendency to hide what you feel from yourself and others.
It was suffering and incapacity that created all afterworlds - this, and that brief madness of bliss which is experienced only by those who suffer deeply. Weariness that wants to reach the ultimate with one leap, with one fatal leap, a poor ignorant weariness that does not want to want any more: this created all gods and afterworlds.
It is sometimes said that the tragedy of an artist's life is that he cannot realize his ideal. But the true tragedy that dogs the steps of most artists is that they realize their ideal too absolutely. For, when the ideal is realized, it is robbed of its wonder and its mystery, and becomes simply a new starting point for an ideal that is other than itself. This is why music is the perfect type of art. Music can never reveal its ultimate secret.
Too often, we judge other groups by their worst examples - while judging ourselves by our best intentions. And this has strained our bonds of understanding and common purpose.But Americans, I think, have a great advantage. To renew our unity, we only need to remember our values. We have never been held together by blood or background. We are bound by things of the spirit – by shared commitments to common ideals.
A nation lives by its myths and heroes. Many societies have survived defeat and invasion, even political and economic collapse. None has survived the corruption of its picture of itself. High and popular art are not in competition here. Both may help citizens decide what they are and what they admire. In our age, however, high art has given up speaking to the body of its fellow citizens. It devotes itself to technical displays that can appeal only to other technicians.
We like to stress the commonness of heroes. Essences seem undemocratic. We feel oppressed by the call to greatness. We regard an interest in glory or perfection as a sign of mental unhealthiness, and have decided that high achievers, who are called overachievers, owe their surplus ambition to a defect in mothering (either too little or too much). We want to admire but think we have a right not to be intimidated. We dislike feeling inferior to an ideal. So away with ideals, with essences. The only ideals allowed are healthy ones -- those everyone may aspire to, or comfortably imagine oneself possessing.
There is a difference between criticizing people and criticizing a people's uninformed ideals. That is, unless one defines himself or others by their ideals, then he is offended, and usually offended secretly. Because oddly enough, this person is the same person quickest to resort to dismissive name-calling, such as 'bigot' or 'zealot'. And oddly enough, he is always the one, the 'open-minded' one, who adamantly protests for, not only himself, but others not to listen to any type of scholarly theological truth inherently for the sake of his own personal, moral beliefs.
The case of the general talk of "progress" is, indeed, an extreme one. As enunciated today, "progress" is simply a comparative of which we have not settled the superlative. We meet every ideal of religion, patriotism, beauty, or brute pleasure with the alternative ideal of progress—that is to say, we meet every proposal of getting something that we know about, with an alternative proposal of getting a great deal more of nobody knows what.
Are we truly committed to the notion that ideals and values vary and alter in accordance with changing conditions? Should we not question such a relativistic dogma? Is not the degree of our sensitivity to the validity of the ultimate ideals and values that fluctuates rather than the ultimate ideals and values?
At that moment, he realised that he did not exist to her in the same way that he existed in his own perception. She held a copied version, an interpretation of him, filtered through the matrix of her priorities and desires.Therefore, surely, he only held a copy of her.
So from now on, screw "perfect." Forget for a while about what kind of person you want to be, and just be the best version of the person you are. Figure out which of your classmates you genuinely like (not who you want to like you), and get to know them by telling your own stories and listening to theirs. Hang out with the people you think are cool, not the people you'd like to be considered cool by. Do things because they interest you, not because they make you look interesting... and then, take stock in a month and see whether you're not happier, healthier, and working on some actual friendships with other imperfect-but-lovely humans.
...in a brutal country like ours where human life is cheap, it's stupid to destroy yourself for the sake of your beliefs. Beliefs, high ideals--only people living in rich countries can enjoy such luxuries.' 'Actually, it's the other way round. In a poor country the only consolation people can have is the one that comes from their beliefs.
He was, as every truly great poet has ever been, a good man; but finding it impossible to realize his own aspirations, either in religion or politics, or society, he gave up his heart to the living spirit and light within him, and avenged himself on the world by enriching it with this record of his own transcendental ideal.
in a constitutionally ordered state, where laws are derived from broad principles of right and wrong and where those principles are enshrined and protected by agreed upon procedures and practices, it can never be in the long-term interest of the state or its citizens to flout those procedures at home or associate too closely overseas with the enemies of your founding ideals.