Religion

"This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being. This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all, and on account of His dominion He is wont to be called Lord God, Universal Ruler."

"I know that the LORD is always on the side of the right. But it is my constant anxiety and prayer that I and this nation should be on the LORD'S side."

"What he orders is faithfully executed. [...] Endowed with beauty in the E-kur, [...] among the great gods, the great and august lord. [...] Lord whose abode is the mountains, father Nanna, [...] fixes the months and the according to a cord, establishes the year. [...] Who puts all the lands in order, [...] who makes the Tigris and the Euphrates bring flowing water. [...] [O]n earth, on the day of the disappearance of the moon, as you have completed the month, you summon the people, lord; and then in the netherworld you decree great judgments, you decide sublime verdicts. Enki and Ninki, the great lords, the great princes, the lords who determine fates, await your utterances, father."

"Lifting your head in your goodness, greatness and majesty, majestically you extend your arm in order to determine destinies: great An has liberally bestowed on you your kingship over heaven and earth, and Enlil has perfected for you your great and noble filial status and lordship. Enlil has made majestic divinity manifest for you. Determining a destiny for your flowing waters, the majestic lower waters, Enki from within the sacred bathing chamber has placed the good earth, the good mother, at your feet. Enlil has sired you in majesty and lordship. O Nanna, your crescent moon is called "the crescent moon of the seventh day". Enlil has made known throughout heaven and earth your name, which is a sacred name. Princely son, he has made your greatness manifest throughout heaven and earth. The majestic assembly has bestowed on you his status as Enlil. And from the place of the sanctuary g, Enki has determined for you your lordship and majesty. King of heaven and earth who adorns heaven and earth, from the majestic abzu, the place of the sanctuary Eridug, he has declared your great lordship and your greatness. O Nanna, he has chosen as your inheritance that you should surpass the Anuna gods. He has seated you in a sacred dwelling amid their pure divine powers which gladden the heart. He has grandly called the great gods to the food offerings. He has seated them for the ritual which fills the heart with majestic pleasure. He has presented to the gods their offerings which gladden the heart. He has seated you in a majestic place, a sacred place. O Nanna, he has seated you in a sacred place, a sacred dwelling."

"LORD, n. In American society, an English tourist above the state of a costermonger, as, lord 'Aberdasher, Lord Hartisan and so forth. The traveling Briton of lesser degree is addressed as "Sir," as, Sir 'Arry Donkiboi, or 'Amstead 'Eath. The word "Lord" is sometimes used, also, as a title of the Supreme Being; but this is thought to be rather flattery than true reverence."

"The Lord showed me, so that I did see clearly, that he did not dwell in these temples which men had commanded and set up, but in people's hearts … his people were his temple, and he dwelt in them."

"August Nibru! No deity excels like your lord and lady! They are powerful princes; they are brilliantly revealed deities. No deity excels like Enlil or Ninlil! They are powerful princes; they are lords who can decide destinies. In your midst they have given divine powers to king Enki."

"Suen, the lord born to command."

"Say to Nanna, the firstborn son of Enlil, who loves prayers; repeat to the lord whose light spreads widely, the crown of heaven and earth, the great lord who loves to revive man; the father of the black-headed; the merciful king, who can untie and release; the merciful, compassionate god who listens to appeals: You, who are perfect in lordship and wear the legitimate headdress, the one with gleaming appearance and noble countenance, holy form endowed lavishly with beauty: your greatness covers all countries. Your fearsome radiance overwhelms the holy sky. [...] You are indeed glorious from east to west. [...] You are the king of heaven and earth; it is you who decide their fate."

"For I would rather be a servant in the House of the Lord than to sit in the seats of the mighty."

"In the relics of the saints the Lord Christ has provided us with saving fountains which in many ways pour out benefactions and gush with fragrant ointment. And let no one disbelieve. For, if by the will of God water poured out of the precipitous living rock in the desert, and for the thirsty Sampson from the jawbone of an ass, is it unbelievable that fragrant ointment should flow from the relics of the martyrs? Certainly not, at least for such as know the power of God and the honor which the saints have from Him."

"Alternate translation: Christ gives us the relics of saints as health-giving springs through which flow blessings and healing. This should not be doubted. For if at God’s word water gushed from hard rock in the wilderness-yes, and from an ass’s jawbone when Samson was thirsty -why should it seem incredible that healing medicine should distill from the relics of saints"

"With great veneration you revere the ashes of Paul, which I do not condemn, if your religion is consistent with your devotion. If you venerate mute and dead ashes and ignore his living image still speaking and breathing, as it were, in his writings, is not your religion utterly absurd? You worship the bones of Paul preserved in a relic casket, but do not worship the mind of Paul hidden away in his writings? You make much of a piece of his body visible through a glass covering, and you do not marvel at the whole mind of Paul shining through his writings?"

"Than shewe I forth my longe cristal stones, Y-crammed ful of cloutes and of bones; Reliks been they, as wenen they echoon. Than have I in latoun a sholder-boon Which that was of an holy Iewes shepe."

"A maṇi-jewel; magical jewel, which manifests whatever one wishes for (Skt. maṇi, cintā-maṇi, cintāmaṇi-ratna). According to one's desires, treasures, clothing and food can be manifested, while sickness and suffering can be removed, water can be purified, etc. It is a metaphor for the teachings and virtues of the Buddha. ... Said to be obtained from the dragon-king of the sea, or the head of the great fish, Makara, or the relics of a Buddha."

"I’ve always thought cemeteries were like cities. There are streets, avenues—you’ve seen them, I think, Michael. There are blocks, too, and house numbers, slums and ghettos, middle-class sections and small palaces."

"CEMETERY, n. An isolated suburban spot where mourners match lies, poets write at a target and stone-cutters spell for a wager."

"Cemeteries: there's another idea whose time has passed! Saving all the dead people in one part of town? What the hell kind of a superstitious religious medieval bullshit idea is that? Plow these motherfuckers up, plow them into the streams and rivers of America, we need that phosphorus for farming! If we're gonna recycle, let's get serious!"

"I have a weakness for cemeteries, though they aren't so beautiful anymore, because they are simply overpopulated! When I meet friends or people I know who are going through a difficult period, I usually have this advice for them: "Go for twenty minutes in a cemetery and you'll see that, though your worry won't disappear, you'll almost forget about it and you'll feel better." Just a few days ago I told a young woman who was suffering fearfully from an unhappy love, "Since you don't live far from Montparnasse, take a walk through the cemetery, just half an hour, and you will see that your misery will appear bearable." In such a situation, it is much better to do that than to go to a doctor; there is no medicine that can help. To visit a cemetery in such a situation is a lesson, a lesson in wisdom! I have always practiced such methods, or recommended them, although it may not seem altogether serious, but it has been effective in every case. What can one say that is meaningful to someone in despair? Absolutely nothing, or almost nothing. My advice shows immediate results."

"He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery."

"Sarah: You're going to say I shouldn't be in the cemetery in the middle of the night, right?"

"Any global tradition needs to begin with a shared worldview — a culture-independent, globally accepted consensus as to how things are. From my perspective, this part is easy. How things are is, well, how things are; our scientific account of Nature, an account that can be called the Epic of Evolution. ... This is the story, the one story, that has the potential to unite us, because it happens to be true.If religious emotions can be elicited by natural reality — and I believe that they can — then the story of Nature has the potential to serve as the cosmos for the global ethos that we need to articulate. I will not presume to suggest what this ethos might look like. Its articulation must be a global project. But I am convinced that the project can be undertaken only if we all experience a solemn gratitude that we exist at all, share a reverence for how life works, and acknowledge a deep and complex imperative that life continue."

"To glorify man in his natural and unmodified self is no less surely, even if less obviously, idolatry than actually to bow down before a graven image."

"I admit, indeed that the expressions “Nature is God,” may be piously used, if dictated by a pious mind; but as it is inaccurate and harsh (Nature being more properly the order which has been established by God), in matters which are so very important, and in regard to which special reverence is due, it does harm to confound the Deity with the inferior operations of his hands."

"To the man whom death’s wing has touched, what once seemed important is so no longer; and other things become so which once did not seem important or which he did not even know existed. The layers of acquired knowledge peel away from the mind like a cosmetic and reveal, in patches, the naked flesh beneath, the authentic being hidden there.Henceforth this was what I sought to discover: the authentic being, “the old Adam” whom the Gospels no longer accepted; the man whom everything around me—books, teachers, family and I myself—had tried from the first to suppress. And I had already glimpsed him, faint, obscured by their encrustations, but all the more valuable, all the more urgent. I scorned henceforth that secondary, learned being whom education had pasted over him.And I would compare myself to a palimpsest; I shared the thrill of the scholar who beneath more recent script discovers, on the same paper, an infinitely more precious ancient text."

"There is no time or need here to wallow in distinctions between a feather-and-bone raptor and a bone whistle avian mysticism; one would no doubt end in dichotomous Western readings thereof, an ideological spectrum ranging from sheer superstition to pure embodiment of the One."

"The sacral power of the eagle is also represented by the eagle-bone whistle."

"The Lakota also use an eagle bone whistle during the Sun Dance."

"The eagle-bone whistle is a traditional vehicle for prayer in [some] Sun Dance."

"The whistle signifies that the eagle knows no evil on this earth, and the Indian ... passes his prayer through that while he is blowing to the Almighty; and there isn't supposed to be any evil in that while he is blowing his whistle."

"Men are constantly attracted and deluded by two opposite charms: the charm of competence which is engendered by mathematics and everything akin to mathematics, and the charm of humble awe, which is engendered by meditation on the human soul and its experiences. Philosophy is characterized by the gentle, if firm, refusal to succumb to either charm. It is the highest form of the mating of courage and moderation. In spite of its highness or nobility, it could appear as Sisyphean or ugly, when one contrasts its achievement with its goal. Yet it is necessarily accompanied, sustained and elevated by eros. It is graced by nature's grace."

"All charming people, I fancy, are spoiled. It is the secret of their attraction."

""Charm"—which means the power to effect work without employing brute force—is indispensable to women. Charm is a woman's strength just as strength is a man's charm."

"How amiable and innocent Her pleasure in her power to charm!"

"But Time's stern tide, with cold Oblivion's wave, Shall soon dissolve each fair, each fading charm."

"The true spirit of conversation consists more in bringing out the cleverness of others than in showing a great deal of it yourself; he who goes away pleased with himself and his own wit is also greatly pleased with you. Most men would rather please than admire you; they seek less to be instructed, and even to be amused, than to be praised and applauded; the most delicate of pleasures is to please another person."

"Charm appertains to the essence of the person or thing endowed with it. It cannot be acquired, it cannot be got rid of, and its results are produced without effort, since the person who has it cannot help producing them."

"Women are more frequently charming than men, because they are less self-conscious."

"Pray present my benediction to your charming wife, who I am sure would bring any plant in the garden into full flower by looking at it, and smiling upon it."

"Oh, it's — it's a sort of bloom on a woman. If you have it, you don't need to have anything else; and if you don't have it, it doesn't much matter what else you have. Some women, the few, have charm for all; and most have charm for one. But some have charm for none."

"Superficial charm, the tendency to be smooth, engaging, charming, slick and verbally facile"

"A spell (paranormal) or incantation"

"An object believed to have been magically charmed, such as an amulet or talisman"

"Charisma, a person or thing's pronounced ability to attract others"

"A trinket, as on a charm bracelet"

"Beauty of the face is the outward charm of a human being, and the beauty of soul is his inner charm."

"The eye of the Spirit had to be forcibly turned and held fast to the things of this world; and it has taken a long time before the lucidity which only heavenly things used to have could penetrate the dullness and confusion in which the sense of worldly things was enveloped, and so make attention to the here and now as such, attention to what has been called ‘experience’, an interesting and valid enterprise. Now we seem to need just the opposite: sense is so fast rooted in earthly things that it requires just as much force to raise it. The Spirit shows itself as so impoverished that, like a wanderer in the desert craving for a mere mouthful of water, it seems to crave for its refreshment only the bare feeling of the divine in general. By the little which now satisfies Spirit, we can measure the extent of its loss."

"In order to examine ourselves thoroughly, let the case be proposed in the strongest manner. What, if I were to see a Papist, an Arian, a Socinian casting out devils? If I did, I could not forbid even him, without convicting myself of bigotry. Yea, if it could be supposed that I should see a Jew, a Deist, or a Turk, doing the same, were I to forbid him either directly or indirectly, I should be no better than a bigot still."

"It can now be sufficiently established... what is the cause and ground in man himself of that faith: namely, love, zeal of doing right and avoiding wrong. Now this love and zeal are able to be present already either before man heard anything of the commands given to him by God or before he was awakened through this hearing. But if neither occurs this faith of which we speak will never be able to exist in man."

"We believe Christ to be the eternal, supreme God; and herein we are distinguished from the Socinians and Arians. But as to all opinions which do not strike at the root of Christianity, we think and let think."