[size=200]The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.[/size]
Tao Te Ching
Lao Tsu
As Translated by Gia-fu Feng and Jane English
[size=150]To always be intending to live a new life, but never find time to set about it - this is as if a man should put off eating and drinking from one day to another till he be starved and destroyed. [/size]
~Walter Scott
[size=85]Food for thought.[/size]
I know this has been around but its still one of my favorites…
Carrots, Eggs, or Coffee?
A young woman went to her grandmother and told her about her life and how things were so hard for her. She did not know how she was going to make it and wanted to give up. She was tired of fighting and struggling. It seemed as one problem was solved, a new one would pop up.
Her grandmother took her to the kitchen. She filled three pots with water and placed each on a high fire, and soon the pots came to boil. In the first pot she placed carrots, in the second she placed eggs, and in the last she placed ground coffee beans. She let them sit and boil; without saying a word. In about twenty minutes she turned off the burners. She fished the carrots out and placed them in a bowl. She pulled the eggs out and placed them in a bowl. Then she ladled the coffee out and placed it in a bowl.
Turning to her granddaughter, she asked, “Tell me what you see.”
“Carrots, eggs, and coffee,” she replied. Her grandmother brought her closer and asked her to feel the carrots. She did and noted that they were soft. The grandmother then asked the granddaughter to take an egg and break it. After pulling off the shell, she observed the hard boiled egg. Finally, the grandmother asked the granddaughter to sip the coffee. The granddaughter smiled as she tasted its rich aroma then asked,
“What does it mean, grandmother?”
Her grandmother explained that each of these objects had faced the same adversity: boiling water. Each reacted differently. The carrot went in strong, hard, and unrelenting. However, after being subjected to the boiling water, it softened and became weak. The egg had been fragile. Its thin outer shell had protected its liquid interior, but after sitting through the boiling water, its inside became hardened. The ground coffee beans were unique, however. After they were in the boiling water, they had changed the water.
“Which are you?” she asked her granddaughter.
[size=150]I am an intelligent river which has reflected successively all the banks before which it has flowed by meditating only on the images offered by those changing shores. [/size]
Victor Hugo
Anzha,… I enjoyed reading your little story…it was beautifully poignant. Stories like that give much food for thought. And, ah, how coffee does change us. 
You ought to C&P it over and create a new thread for anecdotal stories(?) or such, but stories woven by the spirit of Solomon as that one was.
[size=150]"Live abundantly, but thoughtlessly with a huge capacity to forget – seeking to avoid over analysis and not to learn so much from mistakes as to never make another leap’![/size]
krossie phader - on How to live unphilosophically!
[size=150]Confucius said, “He who learns but does not think is lost; he who thinks but does not learn is in danger.”[/size]
“The Angels fly because they take themselves lightly.” Gilbert K. Chesterton
This is why ‘practiced balance’ is learned balance. It becomes second nature to us.
[size=150]"Don’t believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is limitation. Look with your understanding, find out what you already know, and you’ll see the way to fly.”[/size]
Richard Bach - Jonathan Livingston Seagull
“[size=150]What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.” [/size]— Richard Bach (Illusions)
Ah
No one but Night, with tears on her dark face,
Watches beside me in this windy place.
~Edna St. Vincent Millay
[size=150]Be patient with all that is resolved in your heart; try to love the questions themselves; do not Now seek the answers; which cannot be given, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything Now. Perhaps you will then gradually without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answers.
Rainer Maria Rilke[/size]
[size=150]A tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others a green thing which stands in the way. As a man IS, so he SEES.[/size]
William Blake
[b][size=150]My greatest wisdom is my deepest silence."
Me. [/size][/b]
Más sabe el diablo por viejo que por diablo.
“More knows the devil from being old than from being devil.”
[size=150]“Should you shield the canyons from the windstorms you would never see the true beauty of their carvings!” [/size]
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
“Live by the word, die by the sword.”
Live by philosophy…
Irish Blessings
[size=150]May you have the hindsight to know where you’ve been
the foresight to know where you’re going
and the insight to know when you’re going too far.[/size]
[size=150]May you have warm words on a cold evening,
a full moon on a dark night,
and the road downhill all the way to your door.[/size]
A gentleman can always walk away, but he never runs away.
We are not only surrounded by, but exist in, something author Dan Simmons calls “the Void which Binds.”
It has loosely been called “Spirit” and Universal Intelligence or Mind.
We are individuals connected to everything else, not only by awareness or DNA, but by compassion… or lack thereof.
We find ourselves constantly at a crossroads of terrible choice: to promote, enhance, build, honor, bless – or to destroy.
No place was ever made to house the ones who would remain indecisive in this matter.
Mind evolution forces us to choose life or death.
There are no surprises in the Void which Binds and the advertised short-cuts do not exist.
(from an essay: What Does Becoming Human Mean – by Sha’Tara)
[size=150]The closest to being in control we will ever be is in that moment that we realize we’re not[/size].
Brian Kessler
[size=150]In real life, however, you don’t react to what someone did; you react only to what you think she did, and the gap between action and perception is bridged by the art of impression management. If life itself is but what you deem it, then why not focus your efforts on persuading others to believe that you are a virtuous and trustworthy cooperator? [/size]
Jonathan Haidt, The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom, 2005