Literary Works

"For a woman to be a lesbian in a male-supremacist, capitalist, misogynist, racist, homophobic, imperialist culture, such at that of North America, is an act of resistance."

"The relationship between mother and daughter stands in the center of what I fear most in our culture. Heal that wound and we change the world. A revolution capable of healing our wounds. If we're the ones who can imagine it, if we're the ones who dream about it, if we're the ones who need it most, then no one else can do it. We're the ones."

"It is inappropriate for progressive or liberal white people to expect warriors in brown armor to eradicate racism. There must be co-responsibility from people of color and white people to equally work on this issue."

"Every persecuted individual and race should get much consolation out of the great human law, which is universal and eternal, that merit, no matter under what skin found, is in the long run, recognized and rewarded."

"My experience has been that the time to test a true gentlemen is to observe him when he is in contact with individuals of a race that is less fortunate than his own."

"I used to picture the way that I would act under such circumstances; how I would begin at the bottom and keep rising until I reached the highest round of success."

"At Hampton I not only learned that it was not a disgrace to labour, but learned to love labour, not alone for its financial value, but for labour's own sake and for the independence and self-reliance which the ability to do something which the world wants done brings."

"At that institution I got my first taste of what it meant to live a life of unselfishness, my first knowledge of the fact that the happiest individuals are those who do the most to make others useful and happy."

"I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed."

"The older I grow, the more I am convinced that there is no education which one can get from books and costly apparatus that is equal to that which can be gotten from contact with great men and women."

"Nothing ever comes to me, that is worth having, except as a result of hard work."

"During the next half-century and more, my race must continue passing through severe American crucible. We are to be tested in our patience, our forbearance, our perseverance, our power to endure wrong, to withstand temptations, to economize, to acquire and use skill; in our ability to compete, to succeed in commerce, to disregard the superficial for the real, the appearance for the substance, to be great and yet smile, learned and yet simple, high and yet the servant of all."

"When a person clearly understands the Fourfold Noble Truths, the Noble Eightfold Path will lead one away from greed; and if a person is free from greed, one will not quarrel with the world, one will not kill, nor steal, nor commit adultery, nor cheat, nor abuse, nor flatter, nor envy, nor lose one's temper, nor forget the transiency of life nor will one be unjust."

"In truth, the man in this world is extremely weak and contemptible; it is only in the next that he will be of value, if by means of the "alchemy of happiness" he rises from the rank of beasts to that of angels."

"Man has been truly termed a "microcosm," or little world in himself, and the structure of his body should be studied not only by those who wish to become doctors, but by those who wish to attain to a more intimate knowledge of God, just as close study of the niceties and shades of language in a great poem reveals to us more and more of the genius of its author."

"The first step to self-knowledge is to know that thou art composed of an outward shape, called the body, and an inward entity called the heart or soul. By "heart," I do not mean the piece of flesh situated in the left of our bodies, but that which uses all the other faculties as its instruments and servants. In truth, it does not belong to the visible world, but to the invisible, and has come into this world as a traveller visits a foreign country for the sake of merchandise, and will presently return to its native land. It is the knowledge of this entity and its attributes which is the key to the knowledge of God."

"Our wages can't buy all the wealth we produce; So the factories shut down and we are turned loose."

"Australia, land of brazen scum. Come one, come all and get a sunburned bum."

"—Writin an epic? —A novel. —What about? —A true story about smut and crime and poetry and life. About running from Love. —Groovy … You writing me in? —Nope."

"Busy livin all the poems I haven’t written."

"pag.14 [...] an element of freedom from complacent dogma, and a basic curiosity and intellectual generosity: an interest, over and above the motives of gain and advantage [...]"

"p.195 [...] we come to the Buddhist image of the world as the Net of Indra. Every knot in this net, where stings cross, is an individual; and each of these individuals reflects all the others around him or her. Individuals come into awareness of themselves through their relations with each other, and not in a limbo of exaggerated self-importance to the exclusion of the needs of strangers. When we look at ourselves in the Net of Indra, we are not only the selves who inhabit our own bodies, but also a series of reflections and possibilities -all the minds we could savour, all the bodies we could transit through, all the imaginations that could enrich ours."

"pag.190 What is of interest, in the study of civilisations, is not the differences that hold people apart, but the heritage that people are able to share across borders. A more tenable view than the "clash of civilisations" is that the battle-lines run through societies, not between civilisations or nations-states."

"page.7 Confluence is to culture what gravity is to nature. In other words: no confluence, no culture. When culture is alive, it alters itself through inspirations from the near and far, it changes of course. Culture is the eternal shape-shifter. Only by interacting with the Other, can culture keep itself alive. Thus, the greatest civilisations were built on confluence."

"How far, O rich, do you extend your senseless avarice? Do you intend to be the sole inhabitants of the earth? Why do you drive out the fellow sharers of nature, and claim it all for yourselves? The earth was made for all, rich and poor, in common. Why do you rich claim it as your exclusive right? The soil was given to the rich and poor in common—wherefore, oh, ye rich, do you unjustly claim it for yourselves alone? Nature gave all things in common for the use of all; usurpation created private rights. Property hath no rights. The earth is the Lord's, and we are his offspring. The pagans hold earth as property. They do blaspheme God."

"The superfluities of the rich are the necessaries of the poor. They who possess superfluities, possess the goods of others."

"Opulence is always the result of theft, if not committed by the actual possessor, then by his predecessor."

"Work—work—work Till the brain begins to swim! Work—work—work Till the eyes are heavy and dim! Seam, and gusset, and band, Band, and gusset, and seam,— Till over the buttons I fall asleep, And sew them on in a dream! O Men, with sisters dear! O Men, with mothers and wives! It is not linen you're wearing out, But human creatures' lives! Stitch—stitch—stitch In poverty, hunger, and dirt,— Sewing at once, with a double thread, A shroud as well as a shirt."

"As intellectualism suppresses belief in magic, the world’s processes become disenchanted, lose their magical significance, and henceforth simply “are” and “happen” but no longer signify anything. As a consequence, there is a growing demand that the world and the total pattern of life be subject to an order that is significant and meaningful. The conflict of this requirement of meaningfulness with the empirical realities of the world and its institutions, and with the possibilities of conducting one’s life in the empirical world, are responsible for the intellectual’s characteristic flights from the world."

"The denunciation of wealth in the prophetic books, the Psalms, the Wisdom Literature, and subsequent writings was evoked by the social injustices which were so frequently perpetrated against fellow Jews in connection with the acquisition of wealth and in violation of the spirit of the Mosaic law."

"The true intent of the New Testament verse about “rendering unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s” is not the meaning deduced by modem harmonizing interpretations, namely a positive recognition of the obligation to pay taxes, but rather the reverse, an absolute indifference to all the affairs of the mundane world."

"Wherever communal religions have rejected all employment of force as an abomination to god and have sought to require their members’ avoidance of all contact with violence, without however reaching the consistent conclusion of absolute flight from the world, the conflict between religion and politics has led either to martyrdom or to passive anti-political sufferance of the coercive regime."

"The foundering of the postulate of brotherly love in its collision with the loveless realities of the economic domain once it became rationalized led to the expansion of love for one’s fellow man until it came to require a completely unselective generosity. Such unselective generosity did not inquire into the reason and outcome of absolute self-surrender, into the worth of the person soliciting help, or into his capacity to help himself. It asked no questions, and quickly gave a shirt when a cloak had been asked for in mystical religions, the individual for whom the sacrifice is made is regarded in the final analysis as unimportant and fungible, his individual value is negated. One’s fellow man is simply a person whom one happens to encounter along the way, he has significance only because of his need and his solicitation This results in a distinctively mystical flight from the world which takes the form of a non-specific and loving self-surrender, not for the sake of the man but for the sake of the surrender itself — what Baudelaire has termed “the sacred prostitution of the soul.”"

"The fact that people with rigorous ethical standards simply could not take up a business career was not altered by the dispensation of indulgences, nor by the extremely lax principles of the Jesuit probabilistic ethics after the Counter Reformation. A business career was only possible for those who were lax in their ethical thinking."

"The wide chasm separating the inevitabilities of economic life from the Christian ideal ... kept the most devout groups and all those with the most consistently developed ethics far from the life of trade."

"The more a religion is aware of its opposition in principle to economic rationalization as such, the more apt are the religion’s virtuosi to reject the world, especially its economic activities."

"The prophets ... hurled their "woe be unto you" against those who oppressed and enslaved the poor, those who joined field to field, and those who deflected justice by bribes. These were the typical actions leading to class stratification everywhere in the ancient world, and were everywhere intensified by the development of the city-state (polis)."

"In this rationalized economic world of capitalism, not only do the requirements of religious charity founder against the refractoriness and unreliability of particular individuals, which happens in all systems, but they actually lose their meaning altogether. Religious ethics is confronted by a world of depersonalized relationships which for fundamental reasons cannot submit to even the primary norms of religious ethics. Consequently, priesthoods have always, in an interesting shift of roles and also in the interests of traditionalism, protected patriarchalism against impersonal relationships of dependence."

"It is above all the impersonal and economically rationalized (but for this very reason ethically irrational) character of purely commercial relationships that evokes the suspicion, never clearly expressed but all the more strongly felt, of ethical religions. For every purely personal relationship of man to man, of whatever sort and even including complete enslavement, may be subjected to ethical requirements and ethically regulated. This is true because the structures of these relationships depend upon the individual wills of the participants, leaving room in such relations for manifestations of the virtue of charity. But this is not the situation in the realm of economically rationalised relationships, where personal control is exercised in inverse ratio to the degree of rational differentiation of the economic structure."

"It is characteristic of the prophets that they do not receive their mission from any human agency, but seize it."

"So like they are—as roses grow Self-same upon the self-same bough, While just some slight shades intervene, To mark a change more felt than seen— As like they are—as nature loth To make a difference, modelled both To the same shape—it was so fair That not a grace was left to spare."

"When I see Homes, of Beauty and of Splendour, I, that am merely rich in being loved, By one whose wealth is in a heart too tender, To let me share his poverty unmoved: Sighing, I marvel, what such chance of fortune, Can add too happiness, or take away; And whether all the cloying gifts, importune, Or bless the wealthy, through the livelong day!"

"Of the vacant temple Little now remains, Lowly are the statues, Lowly are the fanes, Filled with worshippers no more. Heavily the creeper Traces its green line Round the fallen altar, Now no more divine— As it was in days of yore, In the days of stately Carthage, The ocean’s earliest queen. …. Empire still has followed The revolving sun; Earth’s great onward progress In the East begun— Ruins, deserts, now are there. Downfall waits on triumph: Is such fate in store For our glorious islands? Will our English shore Lie as desolate and bare As the shores of fallen Carthage, The ocean’s former queen?"

"It is a little azure bird, It has a plaintive cry, It singeth mournful to the eve, When none beside are nigh. …. And for the love it beareth them, The natives hold it true, That whosoever kills this bird, Himself must perish too."

"The winds are stirred with tumult — on the air Sound drum and trumpet, atabal and gong — Strong voices loud uplift a barbarous song. Vast is the gathering — while the priests declare The seven-headed god is passing there. On roll his chariot-wheels, while every roll From prostrate bodies crushes forth a soul : Rejoicing such last agony to bear."

"The future doth avenge the past— Now, for thy future's sake, Oh, England ! for the guilty past A deep atonement make. The slave is given to thy charge, He hopes from thee alone ; And thou, for every soul so given, Must answer with thine own."

"Too much by small low interests bound. We track our selfish way, Careless if hope to-day still takes Its tone from yesterday. We look upon our daily path, We do not look beyond, Forgetful of the brotherhood In nature's mighty bond."

"Honoured be each story Brought from other days, But for them there were no flowers On our world-worn ways. Every land, and every heart, Turn back to their earlier part. Let old songs and stories live While the fanciful they give To the Moslem rule in Spain."

"Stately rose their city — Many towns are fair, None rose like Granada In the morning air. There the Moorish princes swayed Empire which themselves had made. Like a dream their memory dwells Where the carved marble tells Of the Moslem rule in Spain."

"Too much this weary world of ours Has fallen since the fall ; And low desires, and care, and crime. Hold empire over all. Yet not the less it is our part To do the best we can : A better faith — a better fate Man yet may work for man."