Themes

"The historical order is very interesting, but accidental and capricious; if we would understand the growth of knowledge, we cannot be satisfied with accidents, we must explain how knowledge was gradually built up."

"...having become established as a psychiatrist, I became increasingly impressed by the vague, capricious, and generally unsatisfactory character of the widely used concept of mental illness and its w:Corollariescorollaries, diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment."

"Aside from the wisdom of going to Bush wants, I am troubled by who pays for his capricious adventure into world domination. The administration admits to a cost of around $200 billion! Now, wealthy individuals won't pay. They've got big tax cuts already. Corporations won't pay. They'll cook the books and move overseas and then send their contributions to the Republicans. Rich kids won't pay. Their daddies will get them deferments as Big George did for George W. Well then, who will pay? School kids will pay. There'll be no money to keep them from being left behind -- way behind. Seniors will pay. They'll pay big time as the Republicans privatize Social Security and rob the Trust Fund to pay for the capricious war. Medicare will be curtailed and drugs will be more unaffordable. And there won't be any money for a drug benefit because Bush will spend it all on the war. Working folks will pay through loss of job security and bargaining rights. Our grandchildren will pay through the degradation of our air| and water quality. And the entire nation will pay as Bush continues to destroy civil rights, women's rights and religious freedom in a rush to phony patriotism and to courting the messianic Pharisees of the religious right."

"In this capricious world nothing is more capricious than posthumous fame. One of the most notable victims of posterity's lack of judgement is the Eleatic Zeno. Having invented four arguments all immeasurably subtle and profound, the grossness of subsequent philosophers pronounced him to be a mere ingenious juggler, and his arguments to be one and all sophisms. After two thousand years of continual refutation, these sophisms were reinstated, and made the foundation of a mathematical renaissance, by a German professor, who probably never dreamed of any connexion between himself and Zeno. Weierstrass, by strictly banishing all infinitesimals, has at last shown that we live in an unchanging world, and that the arrow at every moment of its flight is truly at rest."

"Sometimes gentle, sometimes capricious, sometimes awful, never the same for two moments together; almost human in its passions, almost spiritual in its tenderness, almost Divine in its infinity, its appeal is what is immortal in us, is as distinct, as its ministry of chastisement or of blessing to what is mortal is essential."

"The mere abolition of rent would not remove injustice, since it would confer a capricious advantage upon the occupiers of the best sites and the most fertile land. It is necessary that there should be rent, but it should be paid to the state or to some body which performs public services; or, if the total rental were more than is required for such purposes, it might be paid into a common fund and divided equally among the population."

"No doubt he is horrible, he is abject, he is a shining example of moral leprosy, a mixture of ferocity and jocularity that betrays supreme misery perhaps, but is not conducive to attractiveness. He is ponderously capricious. Many of his casual opinions on the people and scenery of this country are ludicrous. A desperate honesty that throbs through his confession does not absolve him from sins of diabolical cunning."

"As love without esteem, is volatile and capricious; esteem without love, is languid and cold. I am afraid, that many me'n, whose wives have possessed their esteem, have yet lavished their fortune and their fondness upon a mistress; and that the love of others, however ardent, has been quickly alienated, because it was not dignified and supported by esteem."

"She is sweet, sensitive and sympathetic, childish, womanly already, idealistic, quick-tempered, warm-hearted, headstrong, capricious and in every way enchanting. Tolstoy created many women, and they are wonderfully real, but never another who wins the affection of the reader as does as does Natasha."

"Their tawny features, all begrimed with smoke and sweat, their matted beards, and the contrasting barbaric brilliancy of their teeth, all these were strangely revealed in the capricious emblazonings of the works."

"Stalin is too rude and this defect, although quite tolerable in our midst and in dealing among us Communists, becomes intolerable in a Secretary-General. That is why I suggest the comrades think about a way of removing Stalin from that post and appointing another man in his stead who in all other respects differs from Comrade Stalin in having only one advantage, namely, that of being more tolerant, more loyal, more polite, and more considerate to the comrades, less capricious, etc."

"Jack Stillwell had been through his share of northers on the prairie, but nothing had prepared him for the vicious rage of that capricious winter storm that roared down on the southern plains in the early winter of 1873."

"Is it distinguished from the other good things, then, by being the highest but otherwise of the same kind as they are — transient and capricious, bestowed only upon the chosen few, rarely for the whole of life? If this were so, then it certainly would be inexplicable that in these sacred places. It is always faith and faith alone that is spoken of, that it is eulogized and celebrated again and again.."

"Elak got up and recovered his rapier, loudly thanking Ishtar for his deliverance. "For," he thought, "a little politeness costs nothing, and even though my own skill and not Ishtar's hand saved me, one never knows." Too, there were other dangers to face, and if the gods are capricious, the goddesses are certainly even more so."

"A woman is always fickle and changeable thing. Thus a woman is always a changeable and capricious thing."

"What was it that made this human love so much more desirable to me than the love of my own kind? Was it because it was exclusive and capricious? The souls offered love and acceptance to all. Did I crave a greater challenge?"

"Mankind have been slow to believe that order reigns in the universe — that the world is a cosmos and a chaos. The assertion of the reign of law has been stubbornly resisted at every step. The divinities of heathen superstition still linger in one form or another in the faith of the ignorant, and even intelligent men shrink from the contemplation of one supreme will acting regularly, not fortuitously, through laws beautiful and simple rather than through a fitful and capricious system of intervention."

"Lord Byron makes man after his own image, woman after his own heart; the one is a capricious tyrant, the other a yielding slave."

"If we are more catholic in our notions, and want variety of excellence and beauty, it is spread abroad for us to profusion in the variety of books and in the several growth of men's minds, fettered by no capricious or arbitrary rules."

"Fate was not kind, life was capricious and terrible, and there was no good or reason in nature. But there is good and reason in us, in human beings, with whom fortune plays, and we can be stronger than nature and fate, if only for a few hours."

"The Queen was very popular, and in her progresses, or journeys about her dominions, was everywhere received with the liveliest joy. I think the truth is, that she was not half so good as she has been made out, and not half so bad as she has been made out. She had her fine qualities, but she was coarse, capricious, and treacherous, and had all the faults of an excessively vain young woman long after she was an old one."

"Fie upon thee, November! thou dost ape The airs of thy young sisters, * * * thou hast stolen The witching smile of May to grace thy lip, And April's rare capricious loveliness Thou'rt trying to put on!"

"There's a party goin' on right here A celebration to last throughout the years So bring your good times, and your laughter too We gonna celebrate your party with you'Come on now Celebration Let's all celebrate and have a good time Celebration We gonna celebrate and have a good time!"

"Any test that turns on what is offensive to the community's standards is too loose, too capricious, too destructive of freedom of expression to be squared with the First Amendment. Under that test, juries can censor, suppress, and punish what they don’t like, provided the matter relates to "sexual impurity" or has a tendency "to excite lustful thoughts". This is community censorship in one of its worst forms. It creates a regime where in the battle between the literati and the Philistines, the Philistines are certain to win."

"His [Jesus'] object was the reformation of some articles in the religion of the Jews, as taught by Moses. That sect had presented for the object of their worship, a being of terrific character, cruel, vindictive, capricious and unjust."

"Finally, we should note the basic metaphysical assumption of the classical laboratory — namely, that nature is neither capricious nor secretive. If nature were capricious, she would tell one observer one thing and another observer a quite different thing."

"I do not understand the capricious lewdness of the sleeping mind."

"Einstein argued that there must be simplified explanations of nature, because God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software engineer."

"In short, fate’s distribution of long straws is wildly capricious. The reaction of my family and me to our extraordinary good fortune is not guilt but gratitude. Don't have a problem with guilt about money. Were we to use more than 1 percent of my claim checks on ourselves, neither our happiness nor our wellbeing would be enhanced. In contrast, that remaining 99 percent can have a huge effect on the health and welfare of others. That reality sets an obvious course for me and my family: Keep all we can conceivably need, and distribute the rest to society, for its needs."

"Someday beneath some hard Capricious star — Spreading its light a little Over far, We'll know you for the woman That you are."

"English translation: Lady Luck Empress of the World Fate, as vicious as capricious, you're a wheel whirling around: evil doings, worthless wooings, crumble away to the ground: darkly stealing, unrevealing, working against me you go: for your measure of foul pleasure<br bare-backed I bow to your blow."

"So, ere the storm of war broke out, Religion spawn'd a various rout'l'. Of petulant capricious sects, The maggots of corrupted texts, That first run all religion down, And after ev'ry swarm its own: For as the Persian Magi once Upon their mothers got their sons, That were incapable to enjoy."

"Fortuna imperatrix mundi: Sors immanis et inanis, rota tu volubilis, status malus, vana salus semper dissolubilis, obumbratam et velatam michi quoque niteris; nunc per ludum dorsum nudum ero tui sceleris."

"You were the golden star that enflamed, wrapped him up, delivered Zoroaster to Ahura Mazda, the awake, self-reflective effulgence of awareness, the heart of the Sun present inside your expanded angelic arms, the facets of the diamond sphere."

"... your blazing diamond sphere, reflecting the Christ Light and the gold and lilac effulgence of the Sophia-Lucifer staff, cups this emanated Holy Wisdom like a precious substance to offer the world."

"It's all there in ever-spreading circles of revelation and effulgence requiring one to back up to the edge of the universe to be able to see it because it spreads out that far."

"You wrapped up young Zarathustra in the effulgence of the Nimitta, edged in gold from the Supreme Being, pure Light of the Dharmakaya, gold to us, the purest metal, and delivered him to the Christ Light, or Ahura Mazda, the Great Spirit of the Sun."

"An effulgence of Light pulsing out among the rest of humanity I saw the implications of many more humans, why not all 7.5 billion, achieving the same state."

"When you [Hanuman] destroyed Lanka, first you expanded yourself to an immense size, increased your effulgence to that of the Sun at sunrise, then trembled all of Lanka with your roars; they filled Lanka with a terrifying, a deafening clamour."

"The user of the wormhole had to put himself into a particular place in consciousness first; once in the staff, amidst the effulgence of light, you turn around inside your attention and dissolve your skeandahs, the five sense and cognition doors that ground you in your separateness..."

"Your quality is the Light of your Star relative to your energy-being and as focused within the diamond. An epiphany, the Star as the effulgence of the diamond, the tangible Light force that surrounds the diamond. That effulgence of being is what you strive to bring through into human writing, to have the words, whether poetry, fiction, saga, epic narrative, journal, history, commentary, to carry that Star effulgence out into the world, into language, to be your incarnational body."

"Your working relationship with the Christ, the ensouling, pervading, sustaining Light, which means consciousness expressed as an effulgence, an epiphanous illumination."

"First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen, he was second to none in humble and enduring scenes of private life. Pious, just, humane, temperate, and sincere; uniform, dignified, and commanding; his example was as edifying to all around him as were the effects of that example lasting...Correct throughout, vice shuddered in his presence and virtue. The purity of his private character gave effulgence to his public virtues."

"When the mind floats on the sea of the majesty of God and His incomprehensibility, it is amazed and lost in wonder at the serene majesty of God. And forthwith the soul becomes humble, so that if it were possible, when the effulgence of God's majesty envelops it, it would take its place below the whole creation because of its awe and wondering amazement at the majesty of God, ineffable, incomprehensible as it is, beyond the penetration of His servants."

"It is sensed in grandeur, but it is more than grandeur. It is a presence or the effulgence of a presence. The whole earth is full of His glory, but we do not perceive it; it is within our reach but beyond our grasp."

"It soared, a bird, it held its flight, a swift pure cry, soar silver orb it leaped serene, speeding, sustained, to come, don't spin it out too long long breath he breath long life, soaring high, high resplendent, aflame, crowned, high in the effulgence symbolistic, high, of the ethereal bosom, high, of the high vast irradiation everywhere all soaring all around about the all, the endlessness."

"He loves light and not darkness, therefore shines, therefore reveals. True, there are infinite gulfs in him, into which our small vision cannot pierce, but they are gulfs of light, and the truths there are invisible only through excess of their own clarity. There is a darkness that comes of effulgence, and the most veiling of all veils is the light. That for which the eye exists is light, but through light no human eye can pierce. — I find myself beyond my depth. I am ever beyond my depth, afloat in an infinite sea; but the depth of the sea knows me, for the ocean of my being is God. — What I would say is this, that the light is not blinding because God would hide, but because the truth is too glorious for our vision. The effulgence of himself God veiled that he might unveil it — in his Son. Inter-universal spaces, icons, eternities — what word of vastness you can find or choose — take unfathomable darkness itself, if you will, to express the infinitude of God, that original splendor existing only to the consciousness of God himself — I say he hides it not, but is revealing it ever, for ever, at all cost of labor, yea of pain to himself. His whole creation is a sacrificing of himself to the being and well-being of his little ones, that, being wrought out at last into partakers of his divine nature, that nature may be revealed in them to their divinest bliss. He brings hidden things out of the light of his own being into the light of ours."

"I listened to the teachings of Confucius, imbibed the wisdom of Brahma, and sat beside Buddha beneath the tree of insight. And now I am here, wrestling with ignorance and unbelief. I was on Sinai when Yahweh shed His effulgence on Moses; at the River Jordan I witnessed the miracles of the Nazarene; and in Medina I heard the words of the Messenger to the Arabs. And here I am now, a captive of confusion."

"His instrument for this was colour, betokening light. Nice gave him a different light from Paris -- a high, constant effulgence with little gray in it, flooding broadly across sea, city and hills, producing luminous shadows and clear tonal structures."

"The setting sun as usual shed a melancholy effulgence on the ruddy towers of the Alhambra."