posted February 13, 2008 10:45 PM            

Truth, or "Ultimate Reality",
is neither Objective nor Subjective.

Rather,
it exists in the ubiquitous, existential grey-area
that is forever interposed between these two.

The veil is also the truth.

posted February 19, 2008 01:06 PM              

**“Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die.”**
~Mel Brooks

...maybe because only after the latter
are you able to see yourself as having taken the little things too seriously sometimes.

and what a way to go! Death by sewer?
Now that's funny! Or at least, i would be laughing pretty hard in the afterlife if i chose to go out that way.

as humans there will be times when we focus on our papercuts and lose sight of the story in front of us.

As Melody reminded us:

posted February 19, 2008 02:44 PM            

I arfing love Mel Brooks.

posted February 19, 2008 04:25 PM            

When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.
~ Henri Nouwen
(author of "The Way of The Heart")

A loyal friend laughs at your jokes when they're not so good,
and sympathizes with your problems when they're not so bad.
~ Arnold H. Glasgow

A friend is the one who comes in
when the whole world has gone out.
~Grace Pulpit

A true friend is one who thinks you are a good egg
even if you are half-cracked.
~ Author Unknown

It is the friends you can call up at 4 a.m. that matter.
~ Marlene Dietrich

Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo,
but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down.
~ Oprah Winfrey

A single rose can be my garden...
a single friend, my world.
~ Leo Buscaglia

Soul-mates are people who bring out the best in you.
They are not perfect but are always perfect for you.
~ Author Unknown

The most beautiful discovery true friends make
is that they can grow separately without growing apart.
~ Elisabeth Foley

Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind. "Pooh!" he whispered.
"Yes, Piglet?" "Nothing," said Piglet, taking Pooh's paw.
"I just wanted to be sure of you."
~ A.A. Milne

I felt it shelter to speak to you.
~ Emily Dickinson

"Some people go to priests;
others to poetry; I to my friends."
~ Virginia Woolf

Let us be grateful to people who make us happy,
they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.
~ Marcel Proust

She is a friend of mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It's good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind.
~ Toni Morrison, Beloved

Yes we are [friends] and I do like to pass the day with you in serious and inconsequential chatter. I wouldn't mind washing up beside you, dusting beside you, reading the back half of the paper while you read the front. We are friends and I would miss you, do miss you and think of you very often. I don't want to lose this happy space where I have found someone who is smart and easy and doesn't bother to check her diary when we arrange to meet.
~ Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body, 1992

I always felt that the great high privilege, relief and comfort of friendship was that one had to explain nothing.
~ Katherine Mansfield

Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness blow the rest away.
~Dinah Craik

"I need an easy friend."
~ Kurt Cobain

posted February 19, 2008 11:43 PM              

i didnt know who he was until i looked him up earlier.

posted February 19, 2008 11:49 PM              

"The best mirror is an old friend."
--George Herbert

"Friendship is essentially a partnership."
-- Aristotle (4th century B.C.)

"A friend loves at all times."
-- The Bible: Proverbs 17, 17.

"A companion loves some agreeable qualities which a man may possess, but a friend loves the man himself."
-- James Boswell (1763)

"Friendship is a strong and habitual inclination in two persons to promote the good and happiness of one another."
-- Eustace Budgell (1711)

"A good friend is my nearest relation."
-- Thomas Fuller (1732)

"My friend is he who will tell me my faults in private."
-- Solomon Ibn Gabirol

"Let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit."
-- Kahil Gibran.

"However rare true love may be, it is less so than true friendship."
-- La Rochefoucauld (1665)

"A true friend is the greatest of all blessings, and that which we take the least care to acquire."
-- La Rochefoucauld (1665)

An honest answer is the sign of true friendship.-- Proverbs 24:26

What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies. -- Aristotle

posted February 20, 2008 05:53 PM            

~ Kurt Cobain

posted February 20, 2008 06:17 PM            

~ michael azzerad
(interviews cobain in "About A Son")

“I don’t know how many people realise it but Kurt was one of the funniest people I have ever met.”

~ dave grohl

posted February 21, 2008 04:19 PM            

BEING HER FRIEND

Being her friend, I do not care, not I,
How gods or men may wrong me, beat me down;
Her word's sufficient star to travel by,
I count her quiet praise sufficient crown.

Being her friend, I do not covet gold,
Save for a royal gift to give her pleasure;
To sit with her, and have her hand to hold,
Is wealth, I think, surpassing minted treasure.

Being her friend, I only covet art,
A white pure flame to search me as I trace
In crooked letters from a throbbing heart
The hymn to beauty written on her face.

posted February 22, 2008 08:27 AM            

Friendship

Such love I cannot analyse;
It does not rest in lips or eyes,
Neither in kisses nor caress.
Partly, I know, it's gentleness

And understanding in one word
Or in brief letters. It's preserved
By trust and by respect and awe.
These are the words I'm feeling for.

Two people, yes, two lasting friends.
The giving comes, the taking ends.
There is no measure for such things.
For this all Nature slows and sings.

posted February 22, 2008 08:42 PM            

"Until he extends the circle of compassion to all livings things, Man will not himself find peace."
--Albert Schweitzer

"He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals."
--Immanuel Kant

"A righteous man has regard for the life of his beast."
--Proverbs 12:10

"By ethical conduct toward all creatures, we enter into a spiritual relationship with the universe."
--A. Schweitzer

"...We know from the truths of evolution and ecology that we are all related and interdependent. Anthropomorphism (crediting animals with human emotions and traits) is, however, outdated. Rather we know that we are like animals."
--Michael W. Fox

"I want to realize brotherhood or identity not merely with the beings called human, but I want to realize identity with all life, even with such things as crawl upon earth."
--Mohandas Gandhi

"I care not much for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it."
--Abraham Lincoln

"The Anti-Vivisector does not deny that physiologists must make experiments and even take chances with new methods. He says that they must not seek knowledge by criminal methods, just as they must not make money by criminal methods. He does not object to Galileo dropping cannon balls from the top of the leaning tower of Pisa; but he would object to shoving off two dogs or American tourists."
--George Bernard Shaw

"The question is not, can they reason? Nor, can they talk? But can they suffer?"
--Jeremy Bentham

"...we sacrifice other species to our own not because our own has any objective metaphysical privilege over others, but simply because it is ours. It may be very natural to have this loyalty to our own species, but let us hear no more from the naturalists about the "sentimentality" of anti-vivisectionists. If loyalty to our own species--preference for man simply because we are men--is not sentiment, then what is?"
--C.S. Lewis

"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated."
--Ghandi

"I am in favor of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of a whole human being."
--Abraham Lincoln

"I believe I am not interested to know whether vivisection produces results that are profitable to the human race or doesn't. To know that the results are profitable to the race would not remove my hostility to it. THE PAIN WHICH IT INFLICTS UPON NON-CONSENTING ANIMALS is the basis of my enmity toward it, and it is to me sufficient justification of the enmity without looking further."
--Mark Twain

"For fidelity, devotion, love, many a two-legged animal (man) is below the dog and the horse. Happy would it be for thousands of people if they could stand at last before the Judgment Seat and say "I have loved as truly and I have lived as decently as my dog." And yet we call them "only animals"!"
--Henry Ward Beecher (abolitionist)

"I despise and abhor the pleas on behalf of that infamous practice, vivisection... I would rather submit to the worst of deaths, so far as pain goes, than have a single dog or cat tortured to death on the pretense of sparing me a twinge or two."
--Robert Browning (poet)

"Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature, and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears. Would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me, and tell the truth."
--Fyodor Dostoyevsky (novelist)

"Love animals: God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled. Do not trouble their joy, don't harass them, don't deprive them of their happiness, don't work against God's intent. Man, do not pride yourself on superiority to animals; they are without sin, and you, with your greatness, defile the earth by your appearance on it, and leave the traces of your foulness after you--alas, it is true of almost every one of us!"
--Fyodor Dostoyevsky (novelist)

"Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages."
--Thomas Edison (inventor)

"Every year tens of thousands of animals suffer and die in laboratory tests of cosmetics and household products...despite the fact that the test results do not help prevent or treat accidental or purposeful misuse of the products. Please join me in using your voice for those whose cries are forever sealed behind the laboratory doors."
--Woody Harrelson (actor)

"Even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath, so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is Vanity."
--Ecclesiastes 3:19

"Our task must be to free ourselves...by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty."
--Albert Einstein (physicist, Nobel 1921)

"Not to hurt our humble brethren (the animals) is our first duty to them, but to stop there is not enough. We have a higher mission--to be of service to them whenever they require it... If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men."
--Saint Francis of Assisi (mystic and preacher)

"There is not an animal on the earth, nor a flying creature on two wings, but they are people like unto you."
--The Koran (sacred scripture of Islam)

"I abhor vivisection with my whole soul. All the scientific discoveries stained with innocent blood I count as of no consequence."
--Mahatma Gandhi (statesman and philosopher)

"To my mind, the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being. I should be unwilling to take the life of a lamb for the sake of the human body."
--Mahatma Gandhi

"If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we are backing our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies, or capitalist for the same reasons."
--C. S. Lewis (novelist and essayist)

"All cruelty springs from weakness."
--Seneca (4 BC - AD 65)

"We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation, and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form."
--William Ralph Inge (1860-1954)

"Love of animals is a universal impulse, a common ground on which all of us may meet. By loving and understanding animals, perhaps we humans shall come to understand each other."
--Dr Louis J.Camuti (1893-1981)

"It should not be believed that all beings exist for the sake of the existence of man. On the contrary, all the other beings too have been intended for their own sakes and not for the sake of anything else."
--Maimonides (physician and philosopher)

"For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love."
--Pythagoras (philosopher and mathematician)

"Animals share with us the privilege of having a soul."
--Pythagoras (philosopher and mathematician)

"Compassion for animals is intimately connected with goodness of character; and it may be confidently asserted that he who is cruel to animals cannot be a good man."
--Arthur Schopenhauer (philosopher)

"The squirrel that you kill in jest, dies in earnest."
--Henry David Thoreau (essayist and poet)

"The soul is the same in all living creatures, although the body of each is different."
--Hippocrates (philosopher)

"I have always felt that the way we treat animals is a pretty good indicator of the compassion we are capable of for the human race."
--Ali McGraw (actress)

"In studying the traits and dispositions of the so-called lower animals, and contrasting them with man's, I find the result humiliating to me."
--Mark Twain (author)

posted February 27, 2008 10:57 AM            

Yogi Berra J

posted February 27, 2008 12:15 PM            

~ Valerian

((its a play on "the devil is in the details"))