September 03, 2005

Collection of quotes...

I'm trying to sort out my room today. I need to decide what to keep, what to give or throw away. I always quite enjoy finding things in my room that I had forgotten about. I've found some scribblings of quotes from books that I have read, or talks I have heard, and thought I would include them in a blog.

Temple and Cosmos - Hugh Nibley

"Without light, matter is inert and helpless."

"matter is to be acted upon. You can't blame it for making you sin, ... matter is inert. We make the matter act; it doesn't make us act."

"without the ordinances, one has no way of controlling matter, for such control begins with the control of one's self."

"Glory is shared intelligence."

"It is better to be ignorant and interested than ignorant and not interested, and there's no 3rd alternative here. We're ignorant in any case, so you might as well be ignorant and interested in these things."

"There is nothing superfluous anywhere."

"When is something proven? When you believe it!"

"...remember it is an act of faith to believe our senses..."

Meek and Lowly - Neal A Maxwell

"...meekness is needed in order to be spiritually successful..."

"...serious disciples are urged not only to do good, but also not to grow weary of doing good."

"We are urged not only to speak the truth, but also to speak the truth in love." [Eph 4:15]

"Righteous sorrow and suffering carve cavities in the soul that will become later reservoirs of joy!"

"The capacity to lead is associated with the capacity to learn..."

"But long before our knees willingly bend, there must be genuine intellectual humity."

"Humbleness of mind is the initiater of expensiveness of mind."

"...the truth will be resented less when the messenger is meek..."

To Draw Closer to God - Henry B Eyring

"...hear the voice of God in words of the weak and the simple..."

"What the sunshine is to the field and to the flowers the Spirit is to the life of man."

"Your problem and mine is not to get God to speak to us... Our problem is to hear."

"Listen with the intent to obey, then obey."

"Rememberance is the seed of gratitude, which is the seed of generousity."

"...the Holy Ghost will come, not because of one great moment, but because of many little moments of submission."

"His faith reassured him that someday, when God told him how it was all done, he would see all truth as perfectly logical, transparently reasonable. In the meantime he was enjoying discovering what he could with the logic he could muster."

"We may be tempted to be too indirect in our bearing of testimony. You do not have to speak loudly or long. But you must be clear."

"...the effect of sincere prayer and of careful scripture study is to always feel an urging to do things... Real spiritual sight comes to the heart softened by obedience."

Spiritual Roots - Stephen R Covey

"True knowledge is a state of being."

"Continually choose highest good over lesser good and evil."

"...admission of our ignorance is often the first step in our education."

"Listening involves patience, openess and the desire to understand."

"Mind versus mattress!"

"He didn't just say this is the truth. He said, 'I am the truth'."

"Spirituality... a consciousness of victory over self."

"...become a light to people, and not their judges."

"...trust is the highest form of human motivation."

"True communication is a two way process... It is not the importance of the subject so much as the depth of interest that matters... meanings are not found in words... (but) people."

"The highest principle in the Gospel is love of God and people, not love of the principles."

Minds, Brains and Science - John Searle

"...perception is a function of expectation."

How to be totally miserable - John Bytheway

"People eventually become what they think about..."

"Happy people know that activity and depression are opposites."

"The righteous rejoice while the miserable murmer."

"Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions"
[Oliver Wendall Holmes]

"Happy people love to learn."

"FEAR - False Expectations Appearing Real"

"He who waits for roast duck to fly into mouth must wait very long time."

"It's hard to keep frowning when you know someone else is smiling because of you."

Zen and the Art of Motorcylce Maintenance - Pirzig

"personality... intuitive sum total of everything you know and feel about it."

"...condemnation of technology is ingratitiude..."

"Familiarity can blind you too."

"Did Einstein really mean to state that truth was a function of time?"

"How amazing it is that everything in the universe can be described by the 26 written characters..." [Or infact by only 2 states, computers use binary.]

"Mental reflection os so much more interesting than TV it's a shame more people don't switch over to it. They probably think what they hear is unimportant but it never is."

"If you got to ask what is it all the time, you'll never get time to know."

"Stuckness shouldn't be avoided. It's the psychic predecessor of all real understanding."

"Enthousiasmos -> enthuasiasm -> 'filled with thoeos', God or Quality"

"It's amazing the number of mistakes a little light can prevent."

An Inventor in the Garden of Eden - Eric Laithwaite

"...although no-one believes a scientific hypothesis except its author, everyone believes an experiment except those who performed it."

"...wisdom, in fact, dwells in the Arts..."

"...we shall never understand why masses are attracted to each other. Calling it 'gravity' only names it. Likewise we shall never understand electromagnetism, not even electric current, in the sense we understand why actions are taken as the result of of jealousy, compassion, greed or almost any of the so-called abstract things."

"For what shall it profit humans, if they know the Origin of the Universe but lose their ability to use it?"

"If a man and an earwig both fall over a cliff, the man falls to his death, the earwig floats down unharmed. But if instead both are soaked with water, the man will suffer little ill effect but the earwig will most certainly drown."

"The force of analogy is this, that it refers what is doubtful to something like it which is not in question."

"Nothing is impossible, but the probability of their happening lies between a googol and a googolplex."

Mathematics - The Science of Patterns - Keith Devlin

"Mathematical symbols are no more mathematics that musical notation is music."

"Three points either lie on a straight line or lie in a circle."


I think I got a little carried away.. and I didn't even type them all out.. there is so much interesting stuff out there to read! WOW!


1 comment:

Andy said...

Thanks Helen, I love those little bits of wisdom. I used to carry around a notebook where I wrote quotes down, and then read them back to myself when I had a spare minute. You've inspired me to find my notebook!
What a strength it is, to have the company of great thoughts.