Notes

Ideas do act.

A fine saying is hard to suppress.

Vanity seeks light, but not too much.

Love lives and breathes forgiveness.

Where there's a beginning, there's a way.

Vice is more often resorted to than intended.

A man with no possessions never meets a thief.

Archimedes would have moved the world, if he stood in perfect love.

I love soft words,
that tease out the heartstrings,
and draw me on to the contemplation of a dream.

I have time to wait for inspiration. I have no time for uninspired works.

Aphorisms are underused. It is the quick stroke makes the cut.

In writers, I prefer a combination of substance and bravado, sincerity and bombast.

Between confidence and indiscretion there is not so much a step -- as a drop;
the man who is loved for his openness one moment, is despised for it the next.

We don't get to know each other. We get to know who we are with each other. When you get to know who someone is with you, you also get to know who you are with them. Loving someone is loving who they are with you, and who you are with them.

It is no paradox, if we must work for our rest. Those who have not striven valiantly in life should find no peaceful sleep in death. The will which never tries itself should go to the grave unsatisfied. It is right, if it causes the soul to toss and turn, and inspires the most ghastly delusions. I think only those who have followed their dreams in this life shall not be pursued by them into the life beyond.

We speak about having faith and being optimistic when, in fact, what we really want to believe in and encourage are our own plans, and not God's plan for us. I'm all in favor of faith and optimism, but it must be well placed. God perhaps wants us to lose faith and become disillusioned with our own plans, in order that we might grow faith and optimism in a higher way. Do we consider ourselves true optimists? Then why not sell all that we have and give to the poor? Or, are we, perhaps, less than optimistic about the consequences of THAT? Yet, we have plenty of optimism when it comes to pursuing our own desires. This is my point. Many who are judged for their less optimistic outlooks are simply unable to experience the same degree of commitment and enthusiasm with respect to their most personal motivations; they are hampered and haunted by a more objective sympathy with the world.

We all deserve to die. Only a saint is half-decent. Why do you think the starets goes on repeating, "Lord, Jesus Christ, have mercy on me,"? He knows he has neglected the poor, the sick, and the dying, the prisoner, the orphan, the widow, and the suicide. What can he ask for, what can he pray for, but mercy? Guilt hangs like a millstone around his neck, forcing him to be humble; to walk closer to the ground.

Laughter is an antidote to excessive decorum, and a necessary foil to our vanity. Irreverence compels us out of ourselves. But is decorum so prevalent in the world that we must have unremitting levity? And while our vanity, no doubt, needs checking, should we not, perhaps, take care so as not to smother our noblest impulses, as well? For humor not only deflates our bloated pretensions, but, all too often, our highest ideals and aspirations. She mistakes banality for humility, and calls the sublime ridiculous. In pursuit of sincerity, she shies away from sentiment; every meaningful emotion is "heavy", to her, and must be made light of. In taking us outside ourselves, she takes us out of the moment. Humor recalls too quickly the notion that all things have their duration, and their end, and, so, seeks to provide a kind of artificial objectivity by anticipating that end, and calling something finished, and fake, while it is still very much in earnest. Emotions are not permitted to linger, to dwell, to dwindle by themselves, but must be "called", like hitting a stop-watch, or blowing a loud horn, the instant one crosses a finish line. Yet even runners do not stop when the race is ended, for they have still some momentum to exhaust, and it would be cruel to set a wall at the finish, for them to smash into. Though it might be good for a laugh.

What could Alexander offer Diogenes, who desired nothing? The latter was a mystic and a prophet, but the former a ravenous wolf, who impaled his victims, and could not be sated with owning the earth. Here we have the classic dichotomy between the man of thought and the man of action. Only, while Alexander in the fable pays homage to Diogenes, in the world as we see it, the active man rather draws the thinker out and forces him to work. Always, the aims are productive, active, outward. And to the thinker, they are a pointless exercise. He has no desire for conquest, but is content to remain within the temperate zones. He has no taste for elaborate or exotic fare, but lives happily on the fruit of the trees. Who will teach him to be "civilized"?

Many recovering addicts say, "I tried to do it myself for years, but it wasn't until I threw up my hands and asked God to make a way, that I began to discover the will and resources to change." And some people scoff, "You did it yourself. Don't substitute one addiction for another; faith is not sobriety." But we have to recognize our powerlessness before we can call upon a deeper level of power in ourselves -- that is "the first step", yes? As for faith, I think it's just a matter of personal taste or preference, whether or not we refer to this deeper power as "God".

Faith is a value judgment, and not open to debate. Either you consider some things worthy of being called "sacred" (or "holy" or "divine"), or you do not. To cynics, everything in life is prosaic, and exalted language is for less sober types. They might call something "miraculous" in a moment of passion, but they'll be quick to clarify their meaning so as to avoid misunderstandings. "No, no, of course nothing is miraculous." Personally, I feel very sorry for anyone who cannot find a place for words like "sacred", "miraculous", or "reverence" in describing their experience of the world.