Vegetarians

"In the ocean-like virtue of the Bodhimind That brings joy to all beings And in accomplishing the well-being of others, I lift up my heart and rejoice."

"In the spiritual energy that relieves The anguish of beings in misery and Places depressed beings in eternal joy I lift up my heart and rejoice."

"Once I have forsaken the vow of guarding my mind, of what use are many vows to me?"

"Where would there be leather enough to cover the entire world? With just the leather of my sandals, it is as if the whole world were covered. Likewise, I am unable to restrain external phenomena, but I shall restrain my own mind. What need is there to restrain anything else?"

"The Spirit of Awakening … is the tree of rest for beings exhausted from wandering on the pathways of mundane existence."

"Just as a blind man might find a jewel amongst heaps of rubbish, so this Spirit of Awakening has somehow arisen in me."

"Let those who falsely accuse me, who harm me, and who ridicule me all partake of Awakening."

"For the sake of all beings I have made this body pleasureless. Let them continually beat it, revile it, and cover it with filth. Let them play with my body. Let them laugh at it and ridicule it. What does it matter to me? I have given my body to them."

"The Spirit of Awakening is known to be of two kinds: the spirit of aspiring for Awakening, and the spirit of venturing toward awakening. Just as one perceives the difference between a person who yearns to travel and a traveler, so do the learned recognize the corresponding difference between these two."

"May all those languishing in hell come now to perfect joy. And may the stooping animals be freed From fear of being preyed upon, each other's food."

"Those who injure me are really impelled by my actions. For this they will go to the realms of hell. Surely it is they who are harmed by me?"

"His the knife, and mine the body the twofold cause of suffering. He has grasped the knife, I my body. At which is there anger?"

"Thus today in the presence of all awakened Ones I invite every living being to this festival Giving both immediate and lasting joy. May the gods and all others rejoice."

"The Bodhimind is a great radiant sun To disperse the darkness of unknowing, And it is the very essence of butters Gained from churning the milks of Dharma. For all guests on the roads of life Who would take the very substance of joy, Here is the actual seat of true happiness, A veritable feast to satiate the world."

"Like a blind man fumbling in garbage Happens to find a rare and precious gem, Likewise I have discovered The jewel of the precious Bodhimind. Thus was found this supreme ambrosia to dispel The Lord of death, destroyer of life; An inexhaustible treasure able to cure The poverty of all sentient beings."

"They who out of wisdom Have seized the supreme Bodhimind Praise, glorify and rejoice in it, That it may grow to fulfilment."

"Until every being afflicted by pain Has reached nirvanas shores, May I serve only as a condition That encourages progress and joy."

"May I act as the mighty earth Or like the free and open skies To support and provide the space Whereby I and all others may grow."

"May the slander, harm And all forms of abuse That anyone should direct towards me Act as a cause of their enlightenment."

"Regardless whether those whom I meet Respond towards me with anger or faith, May the mere fact of our meeting Contribute to the fulfilment of their wishes."

"Charles: This is the Imus in the Morning radio program. Imus: I'm hearin' you baby. Charles: Yeah! Imus: Where we at? Charles: On WFAN New York. Imus: Hear that. Charles: You know what I'm sayin'? Imus Yeah. Charles: Seven o'clock Eastern Time, and time ImusWhy are we talking like fourteen year old black children? Charles Because we're racist? Imus: Yes. Yeah. Charles: Because we're stupid? Imus: Beyond stupid. Senile and stupid. And lame Charles: Oh, please. Good lord."

"I'm Howard Stern with a vocabulary. I'm the man he wishes he could be. Yes, Howard Stern is a slut. He's a bastard, too. Worse--a Jew bastard! That's the worst kind. Put him in the oven."

"This is the Imus in the Morning program, We're not happy 'till you're not happy."

"Well, June is, uh, National Dairy Month, and I'll be milking Deirdre later... Ain't that right baby."

"...and on MSNBC all over the world. Now, uhh, because it's available all over the world, doesn't mean, by the way, that anybody's watchin' it. Am I right Charles?""

"People of color have had to unlearn the assumption that racism is individual, that it is primarily a question of individual attitudes that can be dealt with through sensitivity training. You remember that Don Imus called the Rutgers women's basketball team "nappy-headed hoes" about five years ago? Five years later he's rehabilitated! But of course this doesn't compensate for the fact that Troy Davis is dead, his life claimed by the most racist of all of our institutions, capital punishment. No amount of psychological therapy or group training can effectively address racism in this country, unless we also begin to dismantle the structures of racism."

"I would rather go to Baghdad than go to a professional basketball game."

"Tom, I'm a veteran. Okay? I did not get a deferment because I was too depressed to fight a war I supported in Vietnam. I'm a veteran. They want a more effective V.A."

"...I’ve moderated my hawkishness, but I’m still fairly much a military hawk. I mean, I thought Afghanistan was a perfectly justifiable war."

"Well, there’s just no doubt [that fighting and winning the war on terror is in the top three priorities]. I mean, there’s a real disagreement about how to best do that obviously. I mean, this all sounds great and, and, and wonderful, and obviously we can all get to—you know, we can all come around inequalities and opportunity and, and energy independence and that sort of thing."

"The oldest, truest, most beautiful organ of music, the origin to which alone our music owes its being, is the human voice."

"No composer has had so deep an influence on the course of his art, before or since. Entrepreneur, philosopher, poet, conductor, one of the key composers in history and most remarkable men of the 19th century, Richard Wagner knew he was a genius. He was also an unpleasant, egocentric and unscrupulous human being."

"Die Meistersinger can have an unpredictable effect on audiences. It's a mystifying work -- odd among Wagner's operas, odd among operas generally. It's billed as a comedy, and by comparison with Wagner's normal mode of cosmic tragedy, it can fairly be called lighthearted. But it doesn't have much in the way of laughs; the funny scenes are so enormous and diffuse they're like slapstick performed by cumulus clouds."

"As he [John Dough, the Gingerbread Man] walked along he heard the sound of a piano, and paused at an open door to peer within the room, for he imagined someone was pounding upon the keys of the piano with a sledge-hammer. But immediately a fluffy-haired man looked up and saw him, and the next instant pounced upon the gingerbread man in much the same way that a cat would pounce upon a rat, and seized him fast, drew him into the room, and closed and locked the door. John was astonished, but the fluffy-haired musician began pacing up and down the room, swinging his arms and shouting: "I have it! I have it at last! I am great! I am magnificent! I am better than Vogner himself!" He paused to glare upon John. "Why don't you shout, you baked idiot? Why don't you weep with joy?" he cried. "It is great, I tell you! It is great!" "What is great?" asked John. "The symphonie! The divine symphonie, you heartless molasses-cake, or devil's food, or whatever you are! And I composed it—I—Tietjamus Toips! I am greater than Vogner!" "I didn't hear it," said the gingerbread man. The musician threw himself upon the piano, and produced a succession of such remarkable sounds that John was surprised. "Did you understand it?" demanded the fluffy-haired one, jumping up again. "No," said John. "No! Of course not! No one can understand it. It is genius! It will be played at all the great concerts. The critics will write columns in praise of it. Some folks can understand Vogner a little. No one can understand me at all! I am wonderful! I am superb!""

"I like Wagner’s music better than any other music. It is so loud that one can talk the whole time, without people hearing what one says."

"After the last notes of Götterdämmerung I felt as though I had been let out of prison."

"Monsieur Wagner a de beaux moments, mais de mauvais quart d'heures."

"I have been told that Wagner's music is better than it sounds."

"Is Wagner a human being at all? Is he not rather a disease? He contaminates everything he touches — he has made music sick."

"Wagner, the master of language, the mythologist and myth-maker, the philosopher, historian, aesthetician and critic, poet of previous societies, who has made simple dramas new again, and clarified the place of the arts in human culture, and understood the values of the past, and who has for the first time encircled the entire structure in one ring, and engraved the runes of his spirit on it - what an abundance of knowledge he had to accumulate and compile, in order to accomplish all this! And yet the magnitude of the task never daunted him, nor did the details and the beauty distract him."

"Heartless sterility, obliteration of all melody, all tonal charm, all music. This revelling in the destruction of all tonal essence, raging satanic fury in the orchestra, this demoniacal, lewd caterwauling, scandal-mongering, gun-toting music, with an orchestral accompaniment slapping you in the face. Hence, the secret fascination that makes it the darling of feeble-minded royalty, of the court monkeys covered with reptilian slime, and of the blasé hysterical female court parasites who need this galvanic stimulation by massive instrumental treatment to throw their pleasure-weary frog-legs into violent convulsion. The diabolical din of this pig-headed man, stuffed with brass and sawdust, inflated, in an insanely destructive self-aggrandizement, by Mephistopheles' mephitic and most venomous hellish miasma, into Beelzebub's Court Composer and General Director of Hell's Music — Wagner!"

"Wagner’s sensualism is not only more elemental than mere ostentation, but also more genuine and spontaneous than the whole ‘blood, death and lust’ mysticism of his time. It was not without reason that for many of the most sensitive minds of the century his work signified the very essence of art—the paradigm which first revealed the meaning and underlying principle of music to them. It was certainly the last and perhaps the greatest revelation of romanticism, the only form of it that is still alive today. No other allows us to apprehend so intimately with what intoxication of the senses it impressed itself on the contemporary public, and how much it was felt to be a revolt against all dead conventions and the discovery of a young, blissful and forbidden world. It is comprehensible, although at first surprising, that Baudelaire, who was himself not musical at all, but the only one of Wagner’s contemporaries whose accents create in us the same feeling of happiness as the Tristan music, was the first to recognize the significance of Wagner’s art."

"Richard Wagner said something I found extraordinary. He said that the "reason for being of music is poetry." I wholeheartedly subscribe to that notion. At times, somewhere in my mind I hear the music of a poem long before the words come together."

"he asked, "who wrote those?" "you did," he was told. "ah," he responded, "its as I have always suspected: death then does have some virtue.""

"What a wonderful work Wagner has done for humanity in translating the toil of life into the readable script of music! For those who seek the tale of other worlds his magic is silent; but earth-travail under his wand becomes instinct with rhythmic song to an accompaniment of the elements, and the blare and crash of the bottomless pit itself."

"Die schwache Stunde kommt für jeden, da wird er dumm und lässt mit sich reden."

"Mein Freund, in holder Jugendzeit, wenn uns von mächt'gen Trieben zum sel'gen ersten Lieben die Brust sich schwellet hoch und weit, ein schönes Lied zu singen, mocht' vielen da gelingen; der Lenz, der sang für sie. Kam Sommer, Herbst und Winterszeit, viel Not und Sorg' im Leben, manch' ehlich Glück daneben, Kindtauf', Geschäfte, Zwist und Streit: denen's dann noch will gelingen, ein schönes Lied zu singen, seht; Meister nennt man die!"

"Drum bitt' ich, lasst den Groll jetzt ruh'n! Ihr habt's mit Ehrenmännern zu tun; die irren sich, und sind bequem, dass man auf ihre Weise sie nähm'. Wer Preise erkennt und Preise stellt, der will am End' auch, dass man ihm gefällt. Eu'r Lied, das hat ihnen bang' gemacht; und das mit Recht..."

"Glaubt mir, des Menschen wahrster Wahn wird ihm im Traume aufgetan: all' Dichtkunst und Poeterei ist nichts als Wahrtraumdeuterei."

"... in Flucht geschlagen, wähnt er zu jagen; hört nicht sein eigen Schmerzgekreisch, wenn er sich wühlt ins eig'ne Fleisch, wähnt Lust sich zu erzeigen!"