Over-soul » Quotations

The Essence of Greatness

ali — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 22:12:30 +0000

The essence of greatness is the perception that virtue is enough.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Heroism

To Be Fortunate

ali — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 22:08:14 +0000

To be fortunate, be not too wise.

On the Brink of Mysteries and Harmonies

ali — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 22:07:11 +0000

Men live on the brink of mysteries and harmonies into which yet they never enter, and with their hand on the door-latch they die outside.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Belief and Logic

ali — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 22:04:23 +0000

Man lives by belief; by logic he can only at best long to live.

Thomas Carlyle

Ask Not Why

ali — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 22:03:44 +0000

WHY? and WHEREFORE?— God wot, simply THEREFORE! Ask not WHY; ’tis SITH thou hast to care for.

Thomas Carlyle

A Wise Lover

ali — Mon, 04 May 2009 02:16:34 +0000

A wise lover values not so much the gift of the lover as the love of the giver.

Thomas à Kempis

Be of Good Comfort

ali — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 02:05:36 +0000

Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man: we shall this day light such a candle by God’s grace in England, as, I trust, shall never be put out.

Hugh Latimer’s famous words of consolation to Nicholas Ridley as they are both about to be burnt alive for heresy.

I Am Dying

ali — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 20:17:10 +0000

SEVERN—I—lift me up, for I am dying. I shall die easy. Don’t be frightened! Thank God it has come.

John Keats

The True Genius

ali — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 22:55:40 +0000

The true genius shudders at incompleteness – and usually prefers silence to saying something which is not everything it should be.

E. A. Poe

Philosophy and Religion

ali — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 18:29:28 +0000

A little philosophy makes men aetheists: A great deal reconciles them to religion.

Francis Bacon

An Atmosphere of Silence

ali — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 18:25:43 +0000

Every deed and every relationship is surrounded by an atmosphere of silence. Friendship needs no words- it is solitude delivered from the anguish of loneliness.

Dag Hammarskjöld

Be Always a Passer-By

ali — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 05:53:16 +0000

Be in this world as if you are a traveler, a passer-by, with your cloths and shoes full of dust. Sometimes you sit under the shade of a tree, sometimes you walk in the desert. Be always a passer-by, for this is not home.

Prophet Muhammad (PBUH)

Reward of Suffering

ali — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 05:46:06 +0000

The reward of suffering is experience.

Aeschylus

Man Will Prevail

ali — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 05:34:28 +0000

I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.

William Faulkner

Genius

ali — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 16:06:33 +0000

The measure of genius is character. Genius is not talent plus character, but character manifesting itself in the form of a special talent. Just as one man will show courage by jumping into the water after someone, so another will show courage by writing a symphony. Genius is talent exercised with courage.

Wittgenstein

The Laughable…

ali — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 04:40:29 +0000

Men show their characters in nothing more clearly than in what they think laughable.

Goethe

humanity of the moment

ali — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 18:05:28 +0000

There is one thing the photograph must contain, the humanity of the moment.

Robert Frank

ansel adams and robert frank

ali — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 18:02:20 +0000

Quality doesn’t mean deep blacks and whatever tonal range. That’s not quality, that’s a kind of quality. The pictures of Robert Frank might strike someone as being sloppy–the tone range isn’t right and things like that–but they’re far superior to the pictures of Ansel Adams with regard to quality, because the quality of Ansel Adams, if I may say so, is essentially the quality of a postcard. But the quality of Robert Frank is a quality that has something to do with what he’s doing, what his mind is. It’s not balancing out the sky to the sand and so forth. It’s got to do with intention.

Elliott Erwitt

black hope

ali — Sun, 20 May 2007 00:12:05 +0000

Black hope is not the same as the American Dream, just like let freedom ring is not the same as the bling-bling.

Dr. Cornel West

a blues man

ali — Sat, 19 May 2007 23:16:21 +0000

A blues man always has a sad soul and a cheerful disposition, but never allows misery to have the last word.

Dr. Cornel West

he never confused…

ali — Sat, 19 May 2007 22:20:16 +0000

Like socrates Dr. martin luther king Jr. never confused success with greatness, he never confused financial prosperity with moral magnanimity, he never confused economic security with personal integrity, he never confused professional consciousness with deep moral commitment. what an example!

Dr. Cornel West

science as the road to happiness

ali — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 07:34:04 +0000

Thus a naive optimism had led people to glorify science, or rather the techniques of mastering the problems of life based on science, as the road to happiness. but after Nietzsche’s annihilating criticism of those “last men” “who have discovered happiness,” i can probably ignore this completely. after all, who believes it–apart from some overgrown children in their professorial chairs or editorial offices?

Max Weber, Science as a Vocation

only like a boy

ali — Sun, 18 Feb 2007 02:27:43 +0000

I do not know what i may appear to the world; but to myself i seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

Isaac Newton, Brewster, Memoirs of Newton (1855)

success

ali — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 00:31:14 +0000

If people advance confidently in the direction of their dreams, and endeavor to live the life which they have imagined, they will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

Henry David Thoreau

a natural photographer

ali — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 17:37:07 +0000

The way i see is comparable to the way musicians hear, something extra sensory. not judgmental. i don’t differentiate between an idea of what is beautiful and what is not. what i see is a reaffirmation of the many things i need to feel. it has to do with obsessive qualities, not explainable. i am a natural photographer. it is my language, i speak through my photographs more intricately, more deeply than with words.

Richard Avedon

dom hélder câmara

ali — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 06:01:39 +0000

When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.

Fom Hélder Câmara

judgement of the young

ali — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 00:01:12 +0000

We who are of mature age seldom suspect how unmercifully and yet with what insight the very young judge us.

Somerset Maugham, The Razor’s Edge

memory over history

ali — Wed, 22 Feb 2006 23:04:16 +0000

There is an ancient Indian saying that something lives only as long as the last person who remembers it. My people have come to trust memory over history. Memory, like fire, is radiant and immutable while history serves only those who seek to control it, those who douse the flame of memory in order to put out the dangerous fire of truth. Beware these men for they are dangerous themselves and unwise. Their false history is written in the blood of those who might remember and of those who seek the truth.

Albert Hosteen, The X Files

solitude

ali — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 22:15:08 +0000

I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. to be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. i love to be alone. i never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.

Henry David Thoreau, Walden

khalil gibran quotes

ali — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 03:44:16 +0000

I prefer to be a dreamer among the humblest, with visions to be realized, than lord among those without dreams and desires.

It is slavery to live in the mind unless it has become part of the body.

Strange, the desire for certain pleasures is a part of my pain.

Paradise is there, behind that door, in the next room; but I have lost the key.
Perhaps I have only mislaid it.

The envious praises me unknowingly.

The highest virtue here may be the least in another world.

Generosity is giving more than you can, and pride is taking less than you need.

Trust in dreams, for in them is the hidden gate to eternity.

Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of
Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.

I said to Life, I would hear Death speak. And Life raised her
voice a little higher and said, You hear him now.

For what is it to die, But to stand in the sun and melt into the wind?
And when the Earth has claimed our limbs, Then we shall truly dance.

Faith is an oasis in the heart which will never be reached by the caravan of thinking

Khalil Gibran