Adages & Proverbs

[Jayson]

This thread if for posting short spiritual adages and proverbs that ring a resonance of truth to everyone.
And by everyone, I mean if it strikes you, and it's dealing with the human condition (what we will call spirituality) then post it. (they can even be ones made up by you)

Some examples can be seen in the parables of Christianity, or the Taoist sayings (as two differing styles of such examples).

And no...this is one thread that debate...is not allowed.
This is a thread of reflection; any debates started will simply be deleted for consistency of purpose and theme.

I'll kick it off with one that I've always liked:
(I suggest formatting the sayings in some noticeable fashion like I have done here.)

"The greatest accomplishment any human can achieve is done by simply waking up and breathing. Everything else is quite simply the most glorious experience; regardless how bleak."
- J.R. Pennington
(J.R. Pennington is my pen name for when I write things that I present publicly rather than supplying my real name...this is an old saying of mine for many, many, many years)

[Liteninbolt]

It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise, than for a man to hear the song of fools.
-Eccl 7:5

[Coatless]

Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too? ~ Douglas Adams

[Jayson]

"Nothing is too high for the daring of mortals: we would storm heaven itself in our folly."
- Carmina

[Jayson]

"They are not dead who live in the hearts they leave behind."
- Unnamed Tuscarora Proverb

[Pandora]

From my Thomas Kinkade calendar, for today:

"For I lift my
hand to heaven, and say,
I live for ever".

-- Deuteronomy 32:40.


Just wanted to throw it out there for all you religious folks. (thought you might like that one)

[The Paineful Truth]

What we do in life, echoes in eternity.--Gladiator

[The Paineful Truth]

I believe in the sun even though it is slow in rising.
I believe in you without realizing.
I believe in rain though there are no clouds in the sky.
I believe in truth even though people lie.
I believe in peace though sometimes I am violent.
I believe in God even though he is silent.
—The Internet

This started appearing on the Internet c. 2002 as an appropriately anonymous expansion/editing of the following three lines written on the wall of a basement in Cologne Germany where Jews were hiding from the NAZIs. It is my epitaph.

I believe in the sun even when it is not shining.
I believe in love even when feeling it not.
I believe in God even when he is silent.
-Unknown

[Arcturus Descending]

“Earth is crammed with heaven
And every bush aflame with God
But only those who see take off their shoes.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

[The Last Man]

"Stop being so religious", by Hafiz:

              What
   Do sad people have in
            Common?

            It seems
They have all built a shrine
          To the past
    And often go there
 And do a strange wail and
             Worship.

  What is the beginning of
           Happiness?
      It is to stop being

           So religious

                Like

               That.

[Arcturus Descending]

Listen to the Exhortation of the Dawn!
Look to this Day!
For it is Life, the very Life of Life.
In its brief course lie all the
Verities and Realities of your Existence.
The Bliss of Growth,
The Glory of Action,
The Splendor of Beauty;
For Yesterday is but a Dream,
And To-morrow is only a Vision;
But To-day well lived makes
Every Yesterday a Dream of Happiness,
And every Tomorrow a Vision of Hope.
Look well therefore to this Day!
Such is the Salutation of the Dawn!
Kalidasa

[ochaye]

All of man’s misfortune comes from one thing, which is not knowing how to sit quietly in a room. Blaise Pascal

[Jayson]

Let's not let this go into a debate here.
If it strikes you for conversation, let's open a new thread.
This thread is simply for the adages and proverbs themselves.

[Blaze]

"Life is the art of drawing without an eraser".

John W. Gardner

[meditation]

"Yes it is. (long pause) It is a good day to die"

Anon 2006 - in resposne to my greeting of "hello, its a beautiful day outside"

[The Paineful Truth]

"Truth is always free, it's the lies we pay for."--TPT

"I would rather be a voice crying in the wilderness for Truth, than to lead billions with a lie."--TPT

“The Truth is clever. The minute we create an idol for it, it becomes a lie.” --TPT

"Careless seems the great Avenger; history's pages but record
One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and the Word;
Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own."
--James Russell Lowell, The Present Crisis

The most profound thing I've ever read:
“It is only in the CREATION that all our ideas and conceptions of a Word of God can unite. The Creation speaketh an universal language.... It is an ever-existing original, which every man can read. It cannot be forged; it cannot be counterfeited; it cannot be lost; it cannot be altered; it cannot be suppressed. It does not depend upon the will of man whether it shall be published or not; it publishes itself from one end of the earth to the other. It preaches to all nations and to all worlds; and this Word of God reveals to man all that is necessary for man to know of God.”
—Thomas Paine

[MONK26]

Feel like Christ and you will be a Christ;feel like Buddha and you will be a Buddha.It is feeling that is the life,the strength,the vitality,without which no amount of intellactual activity can reach God.

[camelherder]

" the truth! what is the truth ?" -Dostoevsky--The brothers Karamazov

" The only way you can pass the test is by not taking the test" -Franz Kafka

"frankly my dear I don't give a damn" -gone with the wind.

" come and get me " -James Cagney

[The Paineful Truth]

“The truth is incontrovertible, malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end; there it is.”-- Winston Churchill

“The love of truth has its reward in heaven and even on earth.”-- Friedrich Nietzsche

“The object of the superior man is truth.”-- Confucius

[Arcturus Descending]

...how alien, alas, are the streets of the city of grief.
Rainier Maria Rilke "The Tenth Elegy"


Where there is doubt, there is freedom.
Latin proverb

[lodinkinni]

"If I had but only lived a little more, I would have died a little less."

"A rolling stone gathers no moss but much blood."

"I know that I know naught, thus I strive to learn how much I do not know."

"A dim's as fine as a nick to a dead man."

[Arcturus Descending]

"Driven by the forces of love, the fragments of the world seek each other so that the world may come to being”

"The universe as we know it is a joint product of the observer and the observed”

"We are one, after all, you and I, together we suffer, together exist and forever will recreate each other.”

"Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire."
— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

If I had but only lived a little more, I would have died a little less."

I don't know who wrote that...but sometimes when we've allowed ourselves to live a little more, to really live in all of the meaningful ways there is to, we are also open to dying a little more or a lot more. The more the pleasure, the more the pain; the more the love, the more the heartache; the more the joy, the more the abyss. But I also get it that way, too.

[lodinkinni]

If I had but only lived a little more, I would have died a little less."

I don't know who wrote that...but sometimes when we've allowed ourselves to live a little more, to really live in all of the meaningful ways there is to, we are also open to dying a little more or a lot more. The more the pleasure, the more the pain; the more the love, the more the heartache; the more the joy, the more the abyss. But I also get it that way, too.

It's the dying words of a villain in one of Thomas Pyle's Robin Hood books. Can't remember which one at the moment. But yeah. It falls along the lines of another quote, too:

"I wanna be, consequence free, as if nothing really matters" -Great Big Sea

Oh, and keeping with the no-discussion theme of this thread, more quotes and contributions to the food for thought program, to make up for the aside:

"I don't care, I'm still here" -Langston Hughs (Still Here)

"Only the good die young" -Billy Joel

"A coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave dies but one." -Shakespeare/Ceaser

"You live and learn...at any rate, you live" -Douglas Adams

"To be able to look back on one's life in satisfaction, is to live twice" -Kahlil Gibran

"Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever." -Gandhi

[Arcturus Descending]

"Pay no attention to the faults of others,
things done or left undone by others.
Consider only what by oneself is done or left undone."
Buddha

Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle,
and the life of the candle will not be shortened.
Happiness never decreases by being shared.
Buddha

One of his students asked Buddha, "Are you the messiah?"
"No", answered Buddha.
"Then are you a healer?"
"No", Buddha replied.
"Then are you a teacher?" the student persisted.
"No, I am not a teacher."
"Then what are you?" asked the student, exasperated.
"I am awake", Buddha replied.
-------------------------------------------------
The below are by Albert Schweitzer

"In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.”

"Never say there is nothing beautiful in the world anymore. There is always something to make you wonder in the shape of a tree, the trembling of a leaf.”

"There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats.”
(I can attest to this)

"We are all so much together, but we are all dying of loneliness”

"A man is truly ethical only when he obeys the compulsion to help all life which he is able to assist, and shrinks from injuring anything that lives.”

"Humanitarianism consists in never sacrificing a human being to a purpose”

"I can do no other than be reverent before everything that is called life. I can do no other than to have compassion for all that is called life. That is the beginning and the foundation of all ethics.”

and last but certainly not least...

"Man is a clever animal who behaves like an imbecile.”

[Ierrellus]

When I was a child--one Sunday God and I skipped church and went for a dip in the crawdad hole.--Ierrellus