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Personal growth for the more mature thinker |
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Wise quotes
"Write the bad things that are done to you in sand, but write the good
things that happen to you on a piece of marble." Arabic parable “I
am hitched by a thread to the world.” St
Francis of “I
play the notes the same as anybody else, but it’s the spaces between the notes….” Arthur
Schnabel “"Seek
to understand and then be understood". Stephen
Covey, NLP practitioner "You
get the best effort from others not by lighting a fire beneath them, but by building a fire within." “Friendship is a school of love” Thomas Aquinas “Who can do anything after Beethoven?” Franz Schubert, whilst still at school “My soul grows through music” Karl Heinz Stockhausen “Having been unable to strengthen justice, we have justified
strength.” "I can honestly say that
I was never affected by the question of the success of an undertaking. If I felt it was the right thing to do, I was for it
regardless of the possible outcome."
—Golda Meir “One child makes
you a parent; two make you a referee”. David Frost “Don’t
ask what you want from life but what life wants from you” “Be your own
lamp and seek refuge in no other. Let truth be your light”. Buddha “If you can’t
have what you love, then love what you have” “My voice is
my possessor. I am the servant of my voice.” Luciano Pavarotti “I pick up a
pen and a building flows out of it”. Oscar Niemeyer, Brazilian
Architect “I don’t
like pianos, I like music more” Sviatoslav Richter “Remain a fool
at all costs” Norman Mailer If you want happiness
for an hour—take a nap. For a monk, not talking has an intrinsic value,
since it is then that he is able to listen, notably to the "still, small voice of God". To put it in secular terms, silence
is necessary in order to perceive and understand things. As Thomas Carlyle wrote: "Under all speech
that is good for anything there lies a silence that is better. Silence is as deep as Eternity; speech is as shallow as time."
"He simply
plays. He is a free man" Of S. Richter " I always
paint what goes through my head, without giving it another thought" Freda
Kahlo "The
difficulty of being understood is the cross that anyone with anything new to say must bear." Prokofiev “If
you are afraid to play a wrong note, the other notes sound less right.” Clifford
Curzon You don't
ask a chef to cook baby food Arthur
Schnabell, when saying that he expects students to have mastered the techniques before becoming his pupil. Every part of the personality
you do not love will become hostile to you. I think
everyone should write. You can shout really effectively when you write. Paul
Abbott, Author I become
most exhausted when the audience is unresponsive Wolfe
Bowart – theatre clown and writer - the London Mine Festival Jan 07. God is
the ground of our being - Paul
Tillich Laughter
is more important in a tragedy than a comedy ...and… Doubt
is the most crippling thing you can have. - Actor
talking about their experience with Dan Crawford, Founder, Kings Head Theatre, Islington. We are
healed of a suffering only by expressing it to the full. -Marcel
Proust, novelist (1871-1922) He who
dares not offend cannot be honest. -Thomas
Paine, philosopher and writer (1737-1809) The game
of life is a game of boomerangs. Our thoughts, deeds and words -Florence
Scovel Shinn, writer, artist and teacher (1871-1940) Many
of life's failures are people who did not realise how close they were to success when they gave up - Thomas
Edison Leaders
see more in other people than other people see in themselves" -Unknown If we
convey what we perceive and experience through the language of logic, it is called science; if we convey it through symbols,
which are inaccessible to the rational mind but intuitively comprehended, it is called art. - Albert
Einstein I have
made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn -Baruch
Spinoza, philosopher (1632-1677) The Rev. Rosemary Lain-Priestly Good morning. In Tel Aviv last Saturday 100 000 Israelis gathered to remember Yitzhak Rabin, their former Prime Minister assassinated
11 years ago whilst attempting to lead the nation towards peace. The crowd was addressed by David Grossman, the secular Jew,
Israeli author and peace activist whose son Uri was killed this year whilst on national service in the Israeli army in Unresolved conflict damages and constrains us. It reduces our capacity to form good relationships, to renew ourselves,
to be fully what we might be. Regardless of where we place the blame we are diminished by conflict until a resolution is found.
This happens whether it's a long-running feud at work, an unspoken resentment between ourselves and a friend, or a family
issue that is always skirted around and never fully faced. In the Christian Gospels there is a story of a woman who had suffered a hemorrhage for 12 years. She believed that
if only she could touch the fringe of Jesus' cloak she would be healed. Her faith in the possibility of change after so long
is astounding. Steeled against the shame of making a public spectacle of herself, she pushes through the crowd and makes the
connection with Jesus. It takes serious guts, but she does what is necessary to change the situation that is distorting her
life. The image of the hemorrhaging of blood mirrors what happens when we allow unresolved conflict to shape our lives. It
results in a sort of spiritual and mental anaemia - a diminished capacity to do or even
say anything because our resources are so are so leeched by that one un-faced issue that there's little energy left for anything
else. David Grossman was saying that two nations cannot live that way any longer, unless they accept
that the lives of all of their children will be warped, drained, even destroyed by the continuing struggle. We often avoid dealing with our buried conflicts because to surface them feels risky, and demands the courage to be
vulnerable to others. Our pride, self-perceptions and public image are all at stake. We've developed coping mechanisms that
now define us, and without them we're not sure what we might be. But the life-giving choice is in our hands. No one else will
make it for us. As Grossman knows, whether the bereavement we suffer is national or acutely personal, the death of our hopes
and dreams, the squandering of the miracle of human life, is a terrible tragedy. "Fire cannot put out a fire" Refugee in "Power is never given; it has to be taken" Martin Luther King " A drawing is taking a line for a walk' Escher " It was not courage but the absence of anxiety" "In order to live a full life you have to burn with
passion about something" “Searching for perfection (in music) makes it
cold and soulless” “Economics without spirituality is like sex
without love” E. Schumacher “Freedom is always a vanishing road on the horizon.
It’s what you do on the way that counts” JP Sartre “Trust is very little about the other person
and everything about you”. “The previous girl friend does the crime –
the present girl friend does the time” Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness
to suffer an injury to one's self-esteem. That is why young children, before they are aware of their own self-importance,
learn so easily; and why older persons, especially if vain or important, cannot learn at all. -Thomas Szasz, author, professor of psychiatry (1920- ) “Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten” “When
two people meet, there are six people in the room. The person as they see themselves, the person as others see them and the
person as they really are”. People
are people because of other people Fergal
Keane PR
“How to make the important interesting” Failure
never did anyone any harm. It is the fear of failure that harms. We may be afraid to go down a dark street, but at the end
there may be something glorious. Jack Lemon. What
a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is goodness. - Leo Tolstoy, novelist and philosopher (1828-1910) He
acts before he speaks, and afterwards speaks according to his actions. -Confucius, philosopher and teacher (c. 551-478 BCE) |
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