Verses to Humanity and Goodwill, Compassion and Forgiveness

Humanity is the spirit of the Supreme Being on earth,
and that Supreme Being preaches love and goodwill.
Humanity is the spirit of the Supreme Being on earth,
and that humanity is standing amidst ruins,
hiding its nakedness behind tattered rags,
shedding tears upon hollow cheeks, and
calling for its children with pitiful voice.
But the children are busy singing their clan's anthems;
they are busy sharpening their swords
and cannot hear the cry of their mother's breast.

- Kahlil Gibran

The day we recognize our interdependency, and

accept and embrace the oneness of humanity,

is the day of resurrection for humanity.

- Hooshmand Kalayeh

"We stagger at the incredible reach of mankind in its technologies and communications. Here is a feat in which all the world contributes from every continent, every people, every tongue, and passion. But what more could be done if this old earth could learn to live together in peace and harmony, and not by hatred's wars? What then could this pained world look like if the shimmering sword was put down? If ploughshares of goodwill were fashioned from the industries of war and hate? It would be a grand vision built from the courageous hearts and minds of a grander people locked in mutual self-interest and God-ordained blessing."

- R.E. Slater, "Enlivening Global Communities by Willful Embrace," August 23, 2013

Space Oddity

 

Published on May 12, 2013

A revised version of David Bowie's Space Oddity,

recorded by Commander Chris Hadfield on board the International Space Station.
(Note: This video cannot be reproduced and is licensed for online music use only.)
With thanks to Emm Gryner, Joe Corcoran, Andrew Tidby
and Evan Hadfield for all their hard work.
Captioning kindly provided by CHS (www.chs.ca)
Find out more:
Twitter: twitter.com/Cmdr_Hadfield

Facebook: www.facebook.com/AstronautChrisHadfield?­­fref=ts

Google+: plus.google.com/113978637743265603454/po­­sts/p/pub

Verses on Humanity, Goodwill, Compassion & Forgiveness
or the lack thereof

http://www.rawfoodinfo.com/articles/qte_humanity.html

No man is an island entirely of itself; Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; And therefore, never send to know for whom the bell tolls—it tolls for thee. - John Donne 

The smallest good deed is greater than the greatest good intention. - anon

There is no limit to the good a person can do, if he does not care who gets the credit. - anon

Humanity is divinity divided without and united within. - Kahlil Gibran

When peoples care for you and cry for you, they can straighten out your soul. - Langston Hughes

If you knew what I know about the power of giving, you would not let a single meal pass wthout sharing it in some way. - Buddha

Until we have the courage to recognize cruelty for what it is - whether its victim is human or animal - we cannot expect things to be much better in this world. We cannot have peace among men whose hearts delight in killing any living creature. By every act that glorifies or even tolerates such moronic delight in killing we set back the progress of humanity. - Rachel Carson

It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ithas become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity. - Albert Einstein

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.  - Albert Einstein

When you hold resentment toward another, you are bound to that person or condition by an emotional link that is stronger than steel. Forgiveness is the only way to dissolve that link and get free. - Catherine Ponder

Until he extends the circle of compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace. - Albert Schweitzer

What is important is to look upon everyone with a deep sense of honor,

because your own heart and mind are influenced by the way you look at others.

If we could do just that, we would be rendering the greatest service to our fellow beings.

- Swami Muktananda

We may have all come on different ships, but we're in the same boat now. - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The less you open your heart to others, the more your heart suffers. - Deepak Chopra

A good heart is better than all the heads in the world. - Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Not a single human can achieve alone what 2 human beings can do when attuned to the same vibration. Two candles are brighter than one. Imagine what a thousand candles can do... a million candles... 6 billion candles! We are all the living prophecy, awakening to our Unity, One with Life, One with the Universe. - "Pathways to Unity"

Forgiveness is the answer to the child's dream of a miracle by which what is broken is made whole again, what is soiled is again made clean. - Dag Hammarskjold

Pride is concerned with who is right. Humility is concerned with what is right. - Ezra Taft Benson

The desire of power in excess caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge in excess caused man to fall: but in charity there is no excess; neither can angel or man come in danger by it. - Francis Bacon, Essays

Those who cannot forgive others break the bridge over which they themselves must pass. - Confucius

Decide to forgive,

for resentment is negative.

Resentment is poisonous.

Resentment diminishes and devours the self.

Be the first to forgive,

to smile and to take the first step

and you will see happiness bloom

on the face of your brother or sister.

Be always the first.

Do not wait for others to forgive,

for by the forgiving you become the master of fate,

the fashioner of life, the doer of miracles.

To forgive is the highest most beautiful form of Love.

In return you will receive untold Peace and Happiness.

- Robert Muller

Humanity has advanced, [but] when it has advanced, [it is] not because it has been sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature. - Tom Robbins

Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around. - Leo Buscaglia

The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good. - Samuel Johnson

Always forgive, but never forget. If you forget, when the lesson of the past is needed, it may be lost. But if you forgive, when the lesson of the past is heeded, it may be what is needed so you can move forward in life. - Mattie J.T. Stepanek

May I become at all times, both now and forever,
A protector for those without protection,
A guide for those who have lost their way,
A ship for those with oceans to cross,
A sanctuary for those in danger,
A lamp for those in the dark,
And a servant to all those in need
As long as living beings exist,
and suffering afflicts them,
May I too abide to dispel the misery of the world

- anon

The true civilization is where every man gives to every other every right that he claims for himself. - Robert Green Ingersoll

The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others. - Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

He who wishes to secure the good of others has already secured his own. - Confucius

A realized soul is like a river or a tree, giving comfort and coolness to those who come to him. - Ammachi, Her Holiness Sri Mata Amritanandamayi

The dew of compassion is a tear. - Lord Byron

Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience. - George Washington

The intellect is a beautiful servant, but a terrible master. Intellect is the power tool of our separateness. The intuitive, compassionate heart is the doorway to our unity. - Ram Dass

We are called to speak for the weak,

for the voiceless, for victims of our nation,

and for those it calls enemy,

for no document from human hands

can make these humans any less than our brothers.

- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

To be able under all circumstances to practice five things constitutes perfect virtue; these five things are gravity, generosity of soul, sincerity, earnestness and kindness. - Confucius

Compassion, in which all ethics must take root, can only attain its full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not limit itself to mankind. - Albert Schweitzer

What soap is for the body, tears are for the soul. - Jewish proverb

I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice. - Abraham Lincoln

May the roads rise to meet you,

may the wind be always at your back,

may the sun shine warm upon your face,

the rains fall soft upon your fields

and until we meet again

may God hold you in the palm of Her hand.

- An Irish Blessing

The highest exercise of charity is charity towards the uncharitable. - J.S. Buckminster

We have a long long way to go, so let us hasten along the road, the road to human tenderness and generosity. Groping, we may find one another's hands in the dark. - Emily Greene Balch

Pleasant words are as a honeycomb, sweet to the soul, and health to the bones. - Proverbs 16:24, the Bible

Though the works of the human race disappear

tracelessly by time or bomb,

the sun does not falter in its course;

the stars keep their invariable vigil.

Cosmic law cannot be stayed or changed, 

and man would do well

to put himself in harmony with it.

If the cosmos is against might,

if the sun wars not in the heavens

but retires at dueful time

to give the stars their little sway,

what avails our mailed fist?

Shall any peace come out of it?

Not cruelty but goodwill upholds

the universal sinew,

a humanity at peace will know

the endless fruits of victory,

sweeter to the taste than any nurtured

on the soil of blood.

- Yogananda, Autobiography of a Yogi

The seed of God is in us.

Given an intelligent and hard-working farmer,

it will thrive and grow up to God, whose seed it is;

and accordingly its fruits will be God-nature.

Pear seeds grow into pear trees,

nut seeds into nut trees,

and God seed into God.

- Meister Eckhart

Our society must make it right and possible for old people not to fear the young

or be deserted by them, for the test of a civilization is the way

that it cares for its helpless members.

- Pearl S. Buck

A bit of perfume always clings to the hand that gives the rose. - Chinese proverb

Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. - Carl Jung

The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

In the final analisis, our most common link is that we inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal. - John F. Kennedy

... if by a liberal they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind,

someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions,

someone who cares about the welfare of the people -

their health, their housing, their schools,

their jobs, their civil rights, their civil liberties...

if that is what they mean,

then I am proud to be a liberal.

- John F. Kennedy, 1960

If you have an opportunity to make things better and you don't, then you are wasting your time on this earth. - Roberto Clemente

I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

He has the right to criticize who has the heart to help. - Abraham Lincoln

When you look for the good in others you discover the best in yourself. - Martin Walsh

Culture of the mind must be subservient to the heart. - Mahatma Gandhi

We are each of us angels with only one wing,

And we can only fly by embracing each other.

- Luciano de Crescenzo

There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

The beloved of the Almighty are the rich who have the humility of the poor, and the poor who have the magnanimity of the rich. - Saadi

The highest realms of thought are impossible to reach without first attaining an understanding of compassion. - Socrates

Forgiveness is the fragrance that the flower leaves on the heel of the one who crushed it. -       Mark Twain

Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.  - Horace Mann, educational reformer, 1796-1859

They have a right to censure, that have a heart to help: The rest is cruelty, not justice. - William Penn, Quaker, founder of Pennsylvania, 1644-1718

A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain. - Samuel Johnson, lexicographer, 1709-1784

He that plants a tree loves others besides himself. - Thomas Fuller

Repost: 25 Famous Authors’ Poetic Descriptions of Paris

http://flavorwire.com/404021/25-famous-authors-poetic-descriptions-of-paris

 

by Alison Nastasi

July 14, 2013

 

Happy Bastille Day! It’s the 224th anniversary of the storming of the famous Paris prison, which helped dismantled France’s repressive monarchy. If you can’t dance along the Champs-Élysées, but want to spread the Parisian pride, head past the jump for a few eloquent and adoring words from famous writers that celebrate the City of Light.

 

Image credit: Ernest Hemingway Collection.

John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston

Ernest Hemingway

 

“If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.”

 

“Paris is so very beautiful that it satisfies something in you that is always hungry in America.”

 

“There are only two places in the world where we can live happy: at home and in Paris.”

 

Charles Dickens

 

“I cannot tell you what an immense impression Paris made upon me. It is the most extraordinary place in the world!”

 

Henry James

 

“The great merit of the place is that one can arrange one’s life here exactly as one pleases… there are facilities for every kind of habit and taste, and everything is accepted and understood.”

 

“Paris is the greatest temple ever built to material joys and the lust of the eyes.”

 

Honoré de Balzac

 

“Whoever does not visit Paris regularly will never really be elegant.”

 

Victor Hugo

 

“To err is human. To loaf is Parisian.”

 

 

Oscar Wilde

 

“When good Americans die, they go to Paris.”

 

Willa Cather

 

“Paris is a hard place to leave, even when it rains incessantly and one coughs continually from the dampness.”

 

Harriet Beecher Stowe

 

“At last I have come into a dreamland.”

 

Katherine Anne Porter

 

“Paris loves anybody who can live anarchically and be delightful entertainment at the same time.”

 

Henry Miller

 

“When spring comes to Paris the humblest mortal alive must feel that he dwells in paradise.”

 

Gaston Leroux

 

“In Paris, our lives are one masked ball.”

 

 

Gertrude Stein

 

“Paris, France is exciting and peaceful.”

 

“America is my country, and Paris is my hometown.”

 

Anaïs Nin

 

“Sometimes I think of Paris not as a city but as a home. Enclosed, curtained, sheltered, intimate. The sound of rain outside the window, the spirit and the body turned towards intimacy, to friendships and loves. One more enclosed and intimate day of friendship and love, an alcove. Paris intimate like a room. Everything designed for intimacy. Five to seven was the magic hour of the lovers’ rendezvous. Here it is the cocktail hour.”

 

“In Paris, when entering a room, everyone pays attention, seeks to make you feel welcome, to enter into conversation, is curious, responsive. Here it seems everyone is pretending not to see, hear, or look too intently. The faces reveal no interest, no responsiveness. Overtones are missing. Relationships seem impersonal and everyone conceals his secret life, whereas in Paris it was the exciting substance of our talks, intimate revelations and sharing of experience.”

 

Katherine Mansfield

 

“I am going to enjoy life in Paris I know. It is so human and there is something noble in the city… It is a real city, old and fine and life plays in it for everybody to see.”

 

Edmund White

 

“Paris… is a world meant for the walker alone, for only the pace of strolling can take in all the rich (if muted) detail.”

 

Allen Ginsberg

 

“You can’t escape the past in Paris, and yet what’s so wonderful about it is that the past and present intermingle so intangibly that it doesn’t seem to burden.”

 

 

Alexandre Dumas

 

“I came to Paris with four écus in my pocket, and I’d have fought with anybody who told me I was in no condition to buy the Louvre.”

 

Jean Cocteau

 

“In Paris, everybody wants to be an actor; nobody is content to be a spectator.”

 

Friedrich Nietzsche

 

“An artist has no home in Europe except in Paris.”

 

James Thurber

 

“The whole of Paris is a vast university of art, literature and music… it is worth anyone’s while to dally here for years. Paris is a seminar, a post-graduate course in Everything”

 

Molière

 

“Outside of Paris, there is no hope for the cultured.”

 

 

F. Scott Fitzgerald

 

“The best of America drifts to Paris. The American in Paris is the best American. It is more fun for an intelligent person to live in an intelligent country. France has the only two things toward which we drift as we grow older — intelligence and good manners.”

 

Angela Carter

 

“Cities have sexes: London is a man, Paris a woman, and New York a well-adjusted transsexual.”

 

James Joyce

 

“There is an atmosphere of spiritual effort here. No other city is quite like it. It is a racecourse tension. I wake early, often at 5 o’clock, and start writing at once.”

 

Mary Elizabeth Braddon

 

“Paris is a mighty schoolmaster, a grand enlightener of the provincial intellect.”

 

François Villon

 

“Good talkers are only found in Paris.”

 

The Poetry of Lisel Mueller

Things

What happened is, we grew lonely
living among the things,
so we gave the clock a face,
... the chair a back,
the table four stout legs
which will never suffer fatigue.

We fitted our shoes with tongues
as smooth as our own
and hung tongues inside bells
so we could listen
to their emotional language,

and because we loved graceful profiles
the pitcher received a lip,
the bottle a long, slender neck.

Even what was beyond us
was recast in our image;
we gave the country a heart,
the storm an eye,
the cave a mouth
so we could pass into safety.




Why We Tell Stories

1

Because we used to have leaves
And on damp days
Our muscles feel a tug,
Painful now, from when roots
Pulled us into the ground
And because our children believe
They can fly, an instinct retained
From when the bones in our arms
Were shaped like zithers and broke
Neatly under their feathers
And because before we had lungs
We knew how far it was to the bottom
As we floated open-eyed
Like painted scarves through scenery
Of dreams, and because we awakened
And learned to speak

2

We sat by the fire in our caves,
And because we were poor, we made up a tale
About a treasure mountain
That would open only for us
And because we were always defeated,
We invented impossible riddles
Only we could solve,
Monsters only we could kill,
Women who could love no one else
And because we had survived
Sisters and brothers, daughters and sons,
We discovered bones that rose
From the dark earth and sang
As white birds in trees

3

Because the story of our life
Becomes our life
Because each of us tells
The same story but tells it differently
And none of us tells it
the same way twice
Because grandmothers looking like spiders
Want to enchant the children
And grandfathers need to convince us
What happened happened because of them
And though we listen only
Haphazardly, with one ear,
We will begin our story
With the word and

 
Lisel Mueller Bio - http://www.lakeforest.edu/library/archives/mueller/

 

Poetry Foundation Bio - http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/lisel-Mueller

 

More Poems from Lisel Mueller - http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/lisel-mueller#about

 

Repost: 9 Things You Can Learn from Shakespeare's Hamlet

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/simon-critchley/9-things-you-can-learn-fr_b_3529453.html

 

by Simon Critchley and Jamieson Webster

Posted: 07/01/2013

 

Simon Critchley and Jamieson Webster are the authors of

the new book Stay, Illusion!: The Hamlet Doctrine.

 

 

The main reason why Hamlet is Shakespeare's most enduring play is that it requires the most endurance. Contrary to centuries of Shakespeare scholarship on Hamlet's quintessential modernity, this requirement is first and foremost factual: Hamlet is the Shakespeare character with the most lines in a single play and Hamlet is Shakespeare's longest play, clocking in at over 4 hours onstage. Hamlet in its entirety might be thought of as Hamlet in its eternity. Hamlet is a king of infinite space.

 

Hamlet also requires our endurance for he is a consummate philosopher, which is why he thinks so much and at such great length and ultimately acts so little. It is difficult for us to peer through centuries of romantic fog that whirl around his character. We tend to imagine the play as lofty, overblown, the pinnacle of Western literature. But the fact is, Hamlet was a revival of an earlier play also called Hamlet- which had been a big hit- and was thus a kind of box-office sequel by London's most successful dramatist: WS. Commercially, Shakespeare never put a foot wrong. Hamlet was a blockbuster. It remained a blockbuster in the decades and centuries that followed.

 

Here we reach a conundrum: Hamlet is a revenge drama. Everyone loves a revenge drama, right? But the play consists of Hamlet's inability to take revenge. The audience would have thought they were going to watch a Tarantino-esque Elizabethan action movie with a few good sword fights. But instead of bloody acts, they get endless bloody thoughts. Hamlet soliloquizes on the meaning of life, dithers and feigns madness, tying himself up in the most exquisite dialectical knots, doubting everything, even the ghost who demands revenge. When he concocts the play within the play, to catch the conscience of the king, and it works- Claudius confesses his guilt- still he doesn't do it.

 

If Hamlet is Shakespeare's most enduring play, then the paradox is that there is something unendurable about it. The play goes on and on. Hamlet goes on and on. Spinning out words, words, words that lose the name of action. The weirdest thing is that having been a crowd pleaser from the very beginning, it seems to do so little to please the crowd. Our expectations about tight, coherent, fast-moving, well-executed plot unravel in scene after scene, spiraling down into Hamlet's infinite jest and perspicuous melancholia.

 

Hamlet is not a version of our best self, let alone our authentic humanity, but what is worst and most selfish in us. His failure of commitment, his radical inhibition, his suicidal melodrama, and his violent misanthropic and misogynistic cruelty, are some of the rather unappealing aspects of our selves. Shakespeare forces us to stare at that which we do not want to look; to see what Uncle Teddy Adorno felicitously called our Hamlet Syndrome.

 

Hamlet is a kind of camera obscura that presents us with a true picture of the world in its inverted form. What if the modern depressive Dane Lars Von Trier was right and some malevolent meteor obliterated the entirety of human civilization in a flash? If somehow after that apocalyptic devastation a single copy of Hamlet remained, a faithful record of our culture could be reconstructed on its basis. It's not a pretty picture.

 

So, what life lessons can Hamlet teach us? Here are a handful:

1. "The world is a prison," Hamlet sighs. This is not just a statement of his mental state. Shakespeare's play is also a drama of surveillance in a police state. Everyone is being watched. This once required expensive and expansive networks of spies. Now it simply requires the use of the internet.
"To thine own self be true"- NOT. People tend to forget that this line was put in the mouth of the Daddy of all windbags, Polonius, and was heavily laden with irony. Polonius's self-serving drivel is an endless source of amusement.




"Were you not sent for?" Never trust your friends. Like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, they might have been sent for by your ever-loving parents and be secretly plotting your execution.




"Mother, you have my father much offended". Hamlet doesn't know if his mother was in on the murder of his father. The Nazi jurist, Carl Schmitt, felt that Gertrude's guilt functions like a dark spot in the play. The lesson seems to be - you'll never figure out what your mother wants. Leave her to heaven, as the Ghost says.




"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." In other words, believe in ghosts. In a world where time is out of joint and the air is filled with war and rumors of war, the dead are the only creatures courageous enough to speak the truth.




"I did love you once... I loved you not." Let's just say that Hamlet has commitment problems, while the ever-faithful and naïve Ophelia is the one labeled a Janus-faced whore. It's good to remember that this war between the sexes has gone on for hundreds of years and men cannot tolerate the question of what a woman wants.




"Tender yourself more dearly." Polonius's seemingly affectionate paternal advice circles around the valuation of his daughter Ophelia as a commodity to be brokered on the marriage market. Lessons on money abound. Here and everywhere in Shakespeare, the language of love degrades into the language of commerce.




"O shame, where is thy blush?" Hamlet accuses his mother of acting shamelessly in marrying his Uncle in rude haste after the death of his father. But the truth is everyone in Hamlet acts shamelessly and for us the moral of the play is the production of shame in its audience. Not too much, just enough.




"Stay, Illusion!" Illusion is the only means to action. The only thing that can save us in this distracted globe is theater. The only truth is found in illusion.

 

Edgar Allan Poe - Annabel Lee

Annabel Lee

by Edgar Allan Poe

It was many and many a year ago,

   In a kingdom by the sea,

That a maiden there lived whom you may know

   By the name of Annabel Lee;

And this maiden she lived with no other thought

   Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,

   In this kingdom by the sea,

But we loved with a love that was more than love -

   I and my Annabel Lee -

With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven

   Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,

   In this kingdom by the sea,

A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling

   My beautiful Annabel Lee;

So that her highborn kinsmen came

   And bore her away from me,

To shut her up in a sepulchre

   In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,

   Went envying her and me -

Yes! - that was the reason (as all men know,

   In this kingdom by the sea)

That the wind came out of the cloud by night,

   Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love

   Of those who were older than we -

   Of many far wiser than we -

And neither the angels in Heaven above

   Nor the demons down under the sea

Can ever dissever my soul from the soul

   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams

   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes

   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side

   Of my darling - my darling - my life and my bride,

   In her sepulchre there by the sea -

   In her tomb by the sounding sea.

 ~ Edgar Allan Poe, c. 1809-1849 (Painting by Kate Curry)

    More about the author - http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/edgar-allan-poe