Themes

"A gymnast can be as graceful as a ballerinaand as appealing as a model in a perfume ad."

"At three years old it [Palm Tree] begins to bear long bunches of orange-coloured fruit, which, contrasting with the deep rich hue of the leaves, adds the charm of colour to that of gracefulness of form."

"Gracefulness is to the body what understanding is to the mind."

"He remembered the gracefulness with which she moved in battle—like liquid flesh. There was no one quite like his wife, and he never felt more triumphant and free than when he was in her company."

"She was a woman who, between courses, could be graceful with her elbows on the table."

"...Erich Fromm wondered why most people did not become insane in the face of the existential contradiction between a symbolic self, that seems to give man infinite worth in a timeless scheme of things, and a body that is worth about 98¢."

"I became a spiritual ballerina. I was as graceful as a swan or any professional ballerina that danced professionally. The prayer card remained in my hand and it went on a wild ride as my hand would sway this way and that. I was so overwhelmed by what the Spirit was doing through me that I could only weep."

"Things are pretty, graceful, rich, elegant, handsome, but until they speak to the imagination, not yet beautiful."

"Betula albosinensis Chinese Birch, ultimately makes a 15 metre (50ft) graceful tree with glossy green leaves turning golden yellow in the autumn."

"The cello is like a beautiful woman who has not grown older, but younger with time, more slender, more supple, more graceful."

"The beauty of flames lies in their strange play, beyond all proportion and harmony. Their diaphanous flare symbolizes at once grace and tragedy, innocence and despair, sadness and voluptuousness. The burning transcendence has something of the lightness of great purifications. I wish the fiery transcendence would carry me up and throw me into a sea of flames, where, consumed by their delicate and insidious tongues, I would die an ecstatic death. The beauty of flames creates the illusion of a pure, sublime death similar to the light of dawn. Immaterial, death in flames is like a burning of light, graceful wings. Do only butterflies die in flames? What about those devoured by the flames within them?"

"Dancing as education, understood by the Greeks, today is coming to the fore again. With limbs less supple, but more powerful than a woman's, a male dancer's virile leaps are every bit as graceful as a ballerina's."

"Gracefulness has been defined to be the outward expression of the inward harmony of the soul."

"Gracefulness is not imposed from without but generated from within. Gracefulness is 'the immateriality which . . . passes into matter.' In this formulation, the soul, or what Bergson elsewhere calls the élan vital, the life force, shapes the matter that contains it. The soul is not immobilized by matter, as it is in comedy, but remains infinitely supple and perpetually in motion."

"Everyone is like a butterfly, they start out ugly and awkward and then morph into beautiful graceful butterflies that everyone loves."

"Gracefulness is an idea not very different from beauty; it consists of much the same things. Gracefulness is an idea belonging to posture and motion. In both these, to be graceful, it is requisite that there be no appearance of difficulty; there is required a small inflection of the body; and a composure of the parts in such a manner, as not to encumber each other, not to appear divided by sharp and sudden angles. In this ease, this roundness, this delicacy of attitude and motion, it is that all the magic of grace consists, and what is called its je ne sçai quoi; as will be obvious to any observer, who considers attentively the Venus de Medicis, the Antinous, or any statue generally allowed to be graceful in an high degree."

"There is no true gracefulness which is not epitomized goodness."

"Do what you will, this world's a fiction and is made up of contradiction,"

"In Afghan society, parents play a central role in the lives of their children; the parent-child relationship is fundamental to who you are and what you become and how you perceive yourself, and it is laden with contradictions, with tension, with anger, with love, with loathing, with angst."

"Every sentence I utter must be understood not as an affirmation, but as a question."

"Women wish to be loved without a why or a wherefore; not because they are pretty, or good, or well-bred, or graceful, or intelligent, but because they are themselves."

"Eagles: When they walk, they stumble. They are not what one would call graceful. They were not designed to walk. They fly. And when they fly, oh, how they fly, so free, so graceful. They see from the sky what we never see."

"Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it."

"Some subjects are so serious that one can only joke about them."

"During our dreams we do not know we are dreaming. We may even dream of interpreting a dream. Only on waking do we know it was a dream. Only after the great awakening will we realize that this is the great dream. And yet fools think they are awake, presuming to know that they are rulers or herdsmen. How dense! You and Confucius are both dreaming, and I who say you are a dream am also a dream. Such is my tale. It will probably be called preposterous, but after ten thousand generations there may be a great sage who will be able to explain it, a trivial interval equivalent to the passage from morning to night."

"Once upon a time, I, Chuang Chou, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was Chou. Soon I awaked, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man. Between a man and a butterfly there is necessarily a distinction. The transition is called the transformation of material things."

"Forget the years, forget distinctions. Leap into the boundless and make it your home!"

"So in this idea, then, everybody is fundamentally the ultimate reality. Not God in a politically kingly sense, but God in the sense of being the self, the deep-down basic whatever there is. And you're all that, only you're pretending you're not. And it's perfectly OK to pretend you're not, to be perfectly convinced, because this is the whole notion of drama."

"If you awaken from this illusion, and you understand that black implies white, self implies other, life implies death — or shall I say, death implies life — you can conceive yourself. Not conceive, but feel yourself, not as a stranger in the world, not as someone here on sufferance, on probation, not as something that has arrived here by fluke, but you can begin to feel your own existence as absolutely fundamental. What you are basically, deep, deep down, far, far in, is simply the fabric and structure of existence itself. So, say in Hindu mythology, they say that the world is the drama of God. God is not something in Hindu mythology with a white beard that sits on a throne, that has royal perogatives. God in Indian mythology is the self, Satcitananda. Which means sat, that which is, chit, that which is consciousness; that which is ananda is bliss. In other words, what exists, reality itself is gorgeous, it is the fullness of total joy."

"My work is an attempt to make room in the Kosmos for all of the dimensions, levels, domains, waves, memes, modes, individuals, cultures, and so on ad infinitum. I have one major rule: Everybody is right. More specifically, everybody — including me — has some important pieces of truth, and all of those pieces need to be honored, cherished, and included in a more gracious, spacious, and compassionate embrace. To Freudians I say, Have you looked at Buddhism? To Buddhists I say, Have you studied Freud? To liberals I say, Have you thought about how important some conservative ideas are? To conservatives I say, Can you perhaps include a more liberal perspective? And so on, and so on, and so on... At no point I have ever said: Freud is wrong, Buddha is wrong, liberals are wrong, conservatives are wrong. I have only suggested that they are true but partial. My critical writings have never attacked the central beliefs of any discipline, only the claims that the particular discipline has the only truth — and on those grounds I have often been harsh. But every approach, I honestly believe, is essentially true but partial, true but partial, true but partial. And on my own tombstone, I dearly hope that someday they will write: He was true but partial..."

"Zen … does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes."

"Certum est, quia impossible est."

"To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don't grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float."

"This is the real secret of life — to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play."

"What, Me Worry?"

"Trivialism is pretty hopeless as a philosophy, although it is very easy to defend/maintain verbally! The main criticism against it which is pertinent to this project is well expounded, and it is an argument from meaning. It is not clear that a trivialist can mean anything by his utterance or written statement, since there is no recognizable judgment attending sentences."

"Trivialism, the doctrine that everything is actually true."

"Whether I am walking or standing still, whether I sleep or remain awake, the supreme knowledge and intuition, are present with me — constantly and continuously."

"Truth is beyond space and time. One who does not yearn for truth, will be trapped within space and time and become dogged. That man alone can remain free from mulish tendencies, who has the capacity to think across time: in the past, present and the future."

"To search for truth should be the main goal in one's life. This is a very difficult task. Let us begin by asking what is truth? What is untruth? To make this decision itself is difficult. Once the decision has been made, it is even more difficult to understand the limitations possible even in truth: elements of doubt and illusion. The Ultimate Truth is still far away, even if we are anywhere near relative truth, it should be deemed a great achievement."

"Eric Draven: Little things used to mean so much to Shelly - I used to think they were kind of trivial. Believe me, nothing is trivial."

"The balance between karma and akarma gives holistic vision. Lots of discussions regarding Karmayoga. No work can be completed without karma. That is the truth. Everybody accepts this truth. Our world is one of incompleteness. Where there is incompleteness, there is relativity. Both karma and akarma are relative. No work is completed without akarma."

"...a border line case of a bearded person may be admitted as both bearded and not bearded without triviality. The admission does not carry a commitment to everything being true (i.e. it does not carry a commitment to what we might term trivialism – the view that everything is true)."

"There's no one thing that's true. It's all true."

"Semiotics is in principle the discipline studying everything which can be used in order to lie. If something cannot be used to tell a lie, conversely it cannot be used to tell the truth: it cannot in fact be used "to tell" at all."

"There are two ways in which the avoidance of trivialism can fail. One is to accept the classical equivalence of negation- and absolute inconsistency."

"If trivialism were true, then every state of affairs obtains — good or bad. Moreover, they obtain without any effort on my part. The trivialist then may offer the following wisdom to those burdened by the weight of the world: Why be worried? Because of the misfortune that befalls you? You regret not having taken a different course of action? But necessarily all things obtain – including everything that is bad for you. There was nothing you could have done to prevent this. So why regret your past actions? Instead, be happy and relaxed. And besides, everything good obtains too – you have missed out on nothing. The conditions for a peaceful, tranquil, and meaningful life are here to enjoy. And there is nothing you need to do in order to ensure that this remains so. Stop your worry, and be happy – and do whatever pleases you."

"I know of no discussion which has degenerated into trivialism into trivilaism, except in moments of jest."

"I am a ridiculous person. Now they call me a madman. That would be a promotion if it were not that I remain as ridiculous in their eyes as before. But now I do not resent it, they are all dear to me now, even when they laugh at me — and, indeed, it is just then that they are particularly dear to me."

"Yes, I dreamed a dream, my dream of the third of November. They tease me now, telling me it was only a dream. But does it matter whether it was a dream or reality, if the dream made known to me the truth?"