People From Philadelphia

"The atmosphere of poetry today seems strained and unnatural. There is an attempt to force the growth of poetry."

"poetry needed no renascence. It was not young, it is not old."

"The future of poetry should be, must be, in the hearts of children, lifting them above mean desires and helping them to believe, with Socrates, that they who have the fewest wants are nearest to the gods."

"Sculpture and painting are moments of life. Poetry is life itself."

"poetry, which is the voice of the soul's aspirations, has for it, of all the arts, the most natural and immediate appeal."

"In education poetry is invaluable; the study of it cultivates the memory, the imagination, and the heart."

"Poetry belongs to the real things—to the realm of the ideal which is "the only real.""

"poetry in some form is necessary to all—save, perhaps, to those who are content to live upon bread alone."

"Of all the arts poetry is the most intimate and personal."

"Existence has little repose, and the cultivation and love of poetry require a detached spirit and a certain amount of leisure."

"Maeterlinck says that compared with ordinary truths mystic truths have strange privileges—they can neither age nor die. Beauty is eternal and ugliness, thank God, is ephemeral. Can there be any question as to which should attract the poet?"

"The business of art is to enlarge and correct the heart and to lift our ideals out of the ugly and the mean through love of the ideal...The business of art is to appeal to the soul."

"She was a great woman with the heart of a little child. Her works praise her; the millions of God's creatures whom she has saved from suffering sing her praise. Where she has gone the recognition of this world counts for little. She has gone where the merciful are blessed, where the pure in heart see God."

"They live indeed—the dead by whose example we are upward led."

"The question of perpetual copyright is, in my judgement, entitled to the full and favorable consideration of the Congress of an enlightened republic. There would seem to be every reason for the equitable protection, without limit as to time, of the unquestioned property rights of its citizens."

"My "Poems" were written without a purpose, other than the expression of faiths and ideals strongly realized and emotions keenly felt. They were written for the joy of writing, and for the satisfaction of an irresistible impulse. It is my belief that it is not the business of art either to teach or to preach."

"I love, and the world is mine!"

"A democrat by conviction rather than by temperament, urging democracy as 'the only method consistent with human instinct toward expansion,' he was yet an educator, and believed in equality upon a high, not upon a low plane. Like Ruskin, he demanded of men their best, and with less than their best refused to be satisfied."

"As generous as a woman and as inspiring as a poet as she is discriminating in hero worship, this appreciation of "the noblest man that ever lived in the tides of time" is dedicated by her friend, THE AUTHOR."

"Meaning in life can’t be reduced to simplistic mottos. In some number of years I will be dead; some memory of my time here on Earth may linger, but I won’t be around to savor it."

"We need to find the courage to say NO to the things and people that are not serving us if we want to rediscover ourselves and live our lives with authenticity."

"If you aren't good at loving yourself, you will have a difficult time loving anyone, since you'll resent the time and energy you give another person that you aren't even giving to yourself."

"The more anger towards the past you carry in your heart, the less capable you are of loving in the present."

"What we can’t do is demand that the universe scratch our explanatory itches. Curiosity is a virtue, and it’s good to look for answers to “Why?” questions whenever we might be able to find them, or when we think that asking such questions might help us to understand things better. But we should be at peace with the possibility that, for some questions, the answer doesn’t go any deeper than “That’s what it is.” We’re not used to that—our intuition assures us that every event can be explained in terms of some reason why. To understand why we have that impression, we need to dig more deeply into how our actual universe has evolved."

"The “reasons” and “causes” why things happen, in other words, aren’t fundamental; they are emergent. We need to dig in to the actual history of the universe to see why these concepts have emerged."

"Metaphysical principles are tempting shortcuts but not reliable guides. There are good reasons why things often seem to happen for reasons—and also reasons why that’s not a bedrock principle."

"The momentary or Laplacian nature of physical evolution doesn’t have much relevance for the choices we face in our everyday lives. For poetic naturalism, the situation is clear. There is one way of talking about the universe that describes it as elementary particles or quantum states, in which Laplace holds sway and what happens next depends only on the state of the system right now."

"What we’re seeing is a manifestation of the layered nature of our descriptions of reality. At the deepest level we currently know about, the basic notions are things like “spacetime,” “quantum fields,” “equations of motion,” and “interactions.” No causes, whether material, formal, efficient, or final. But there are levels on top of that, where the vocabulary changes."

"Poetic naturalism is a philosophy of freedom and responsibility. The raw materials of life are given to us by the natural world, and we must work to understand them and accept the consequences. The move from description to prescription, from saying what happens to passing judgment on what should happen, is a creative one, a fundamentally human act. The world is just the world, unfolding according to the patterns of nature, free of any judgmental attributes. The world exists; beauty and goodness are things that we bring to it."

"The broader ontology typically associated with atheism is naturalism—there is only one world, the natural world, exhibiting patterns we call the “laws of nature,” and which is discoverable by the methods of science and empirical investigation. There is no separate realm of the supernatural, spiritual, or divine; nor is there any cosmic teleology or transcendent purpose inherent in the nature of the universe or in human life. “Life” and “consciousness” do not denote essences distinct from matter; they are ways of talking about phenomena that emerge from the interplay of extraordinarily complex systems. Purpose and meaning in life arise through fundamentally human acts of creation, rather than being derived from anything outside ourselves. Naturalism is a philosophy of unity and patterns, describing all of reality as a seamless web."

"... I just want to understand the large-scale story that string gas cosmology is trying to sell us. We have nine dimensions of space — they are all very small — and in three dimensions they start unwinding and getting bigger. Is that the basic idea?"

"People don't like to read papers — they like to read titles."

"When exactly does an observation occur? ... What were the laws of physics doing before there was anyone measuring things? And what do you mean by a measurement, anyway? Does it have to be a consciousness human being? ... Can a rock or a virus or an earthworm do an observation?"

"All of my advice comes from remembering what I did wrong and then telling people not to do it. ... Don't wait to read the most recent research papers. ... Wonder how you could do better. ... Do your own research projects. Take the initiative. ... Ask your own questions — try to answer them. ... At some point you stop being a student and you start being a scientist. ... And it's a completely different skill set ...""

"There probably are more forces than we know about, but they’re only going to be of direct interest to physicists, I’m afraid. No tractor beams."

"Inflation is a simple idea: imagine that the universe begins in a tiny patch of space dominated by the potential energy of some scalar field, a kind of super-dense dark energy. This causes that patch to expand at a terrifically accelerated rate, smoothing out the density and diluting away any unwanted relics. Eventually the scalar field decays into ordinary matter and radiation, reheating the universe into a conventional Big Bang state, after which things proceed as normal."

"The mystery of the arrow of time comes down to this: Why were the conditions in the early universe set up in a particular way, in a configuration of low entropy that enabled all of the interesting and irreversible processes to come?"

"In contrast to the arbitrarily complicated evolution of a (nonintegrable) classical system, all a quantum state ever does is move in circles."

"Even if we don't know the answer, a change of perspective can help us improve the question."

"It can't be stressed enough that the multiverse is utterly hypothetical—but that doesn't mean it isn't real."

"But sometimes reality chooses not to conform to our preferences."

"But the very fact that matter in the cosmos is still moving, rather than at rest, is the single most surprising thing about the universe."

"Feed the soul, starve the ego."

"I have never experienced anything quite like Adam Goldstein. He made me feel warm and whole. He smelled soft. Adam was a remarkable human being, and so many have been blessed by his presence. We talked of marriage and excitement of having children together. He would whisper in my ear sometimes before we went to sleep, 'Goodnight, my sweet angel.' Most mornings when I woke up, he'd make me toast and juice and say, 'Good morning, soul mate.' I will cherish the memories forever. Even though our time together was short, I would change nothing. The love I continue to feel for him and the love that we shared together will live with me and those who witnessed us together forever. I will never be the same without him. A part of me has passed away with him. Even the warmest of days will never compare to the warmth I felt when I touched him. He was my soul mate, and now he is my soul. He was my amazing grace."

"This week has been one of the hardest I've ever lived. My close friend, Adam had passed away. Known for his impeccable DJing. He was much more than that to me and many, many other people. He helped and touched everyone who met him. Treating you as if he had known you forever. He was always sharing such joy among others… and if you were lucky enough to hear the sound of his laughter, you got to hear something very, very, special. It's incredibly hard to think of what to say about you Adam, as tears are running down my face. All I can say is I love you Adam and I miss you and am so glad you were someone in my sister’s, and my life."

"We were live on-air and I had to fill for time, so I just rolled up on him — I didn't know him. And I remember thinking how unfazed he was that we'd just shoved a camera in his face, because he was kind, he was charismatic, he was funny. He was a good guy and I remember that meeting very well. We spoke after that, and we would see each other out a lot and I would go and see him play. He was always cool, like effortlessly cool."

"I just can’t wrap my head around it – I don’t want to believe it’s real – and nothing I can say will serve his memory any justice right now. I’m just f-ng sad sad."

"In complete shock. I really want to use words right now but I can’t get em. Fuck. We’re supposed to lose our friends to time, at an age when we’re ready to agree to the terms of having lived a long life. Not now."

"I am deeply saddened by the news of the passing of DJ AM. He was our resident DJ at Rain Nightclub at the Palms Casino Resort. We considered him a friend and a great artist. He will truly be missed."

"I saw DJ AM play in a mansion in Miami, and he amazed me with his skills and the music he picked to make the crowd move. He made sure everyone — I mean everyone — had a good time!"